


The Last of Them

by RedPriest



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-11
Updated: 2014-05-12
Packaged: 2017-12-29 02:42:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 31
Words: 121,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/999896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedPriest/pseuds/RedPriest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Following on from the game, Joel and Ellie return to Tommy's to find nothing for them there. They're forced out into the wild once again. Expands on the game's themes of love and family and morality whilst adding some new ones, like religion, the fear of loneliness. AS OF CHAPTER 21, now also details Joel and Ellie's lives before they met one another in the form of flashbacks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. ELLIE I

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:**  First of all, thanks for getting this far. I've been really touched by the story and the characters and the settings of  _The Last of Us_  and replays aren't enough for me anymore. I want that first-time vibe again, so I've decided to explore them in this form. This serves, for me, as a direct continuation of the game. So direct, in fact, that it begins whilst the game is still going, so I'm sure some of the dialogue will be recognisable. I've planned the story out. For me, the story of the cure is finished, and there is a new plot going to emerge slowly in the first few chapters. In so far as how long this will be, I'm not sure. As short or as long as it needs to be to tell the story. I hope you like it. Favorite, follow, read, review, but most importantly - enjoy! ;)

* * *

**ELLIE I**

* * *

"I struggled for a long time with survivin'," Joel said, fingers brushing lightly against his watch. "No matter what – you keep finding something to fight for. Now I know that's not what you wanna hear right now, but –"

"Swear to me," she said. Ellie stared deep into those brown eyes. "Swear to me that  _everything_ that you said about the Fireflies is true." She could feel her heart beating faster, breathing heavier, as if she had been running. Joel shifted his stance, she noticed. Was he moving in disbelief at the question, or wondering if he owed her the truth? There was a long silence, until –

"I swear."

She thought hard. She wanted to argue with him, to beat her fists hard against his chest, she wanted to be angry… but Ellie wasn't angry. Ellie didn't know what she felt; for the longest amount of time there had been something heavy on her shoulders, weighing her down; now it was gone.

"Okay."

Joel nodded and looked ahead. Loose rocks peppered with brown and dying grass. "This is us, kid. Home stretch. Take my hand."

Ellie watched as Joel walked over the gravel, stumbling a little as it groaned under his weight. One wrong step and they would break a leg, maybe worse. She nodded and followed him closely. She held out her hand, and he gripped it tightly.

The treacherous way down seemed more intense with the silence between the two. From Salt Lake City back to Jackson, there had been many terse situations. Ellie could feel the electricity now in the air. Joel's silence spoke to her, whispered at her guilt.  _He's lying to me._  She wondered if Marlene would be angry that he left; she wondered if the blood spray on the hospital gown she woke up in was somebody Marlene knew. Most of all, Ellie wondered if Marlene was dead.  _It's my fault if she is. If she died trying to find me. Isn't it?_  There was a relief in Joel's affirmation, but Ellie knew there was an uncertainty too.

"The walls sure are big," Ellie said eventually, running her hand along the cool metal that bordered the city. "Were they here before?"

"Nah, the survivors will have put 'em up. Probably Tommy's group."

"I forgot how long it'd been."

"Leaves were dead when we left, and they're just coming back now, so I'd say 'bout – uh – six months. Seven months. Fall to spring."

The conversation still seemed light. The silence was telling but there was nothing lost between the two, Ellie thought. She smiled a little at the thought, Joel just ahead of her – as always. His coat was dark and green, under it a bulletproof vest. Until Salt Lake City, Ellie had been wearing a vest too, and now it was just the latest in a long line of entities to leave her without a word.

"Joel," she said, pace slowing. "What's next? What do we do now?"

His head turned left while he listened to her, and back. "I dunno. We get to relax for a while. You could read me some more of them bad jokes."

She laughed, remembering. "You still have it?"

"It was in my backpack, unfortunately. Shoulda burned it when I had the chance," he said, smiling at her.

She laughed. "Never. What else can we do?"

He was silent for a few seconds. "Maybe I'll teach you to swim. Next time  _you_ can freeze your ass off carrying  _me_  on a little barge."

"That's how I know there's no god."

"Huh?"

"Shit world design," she said and jogged up a little, walking beside him. The barricade stretched all the way round the settlement, she knew, but the settlement itself was only a small portion of what was once the city of Jackson. Ellie thought a lot about what cities had looked like back then, the time when light from cars had lit up the sidewalks; when grass hadn't coiled its way through every pavement and building, roping buildings that had once stretched up, up, up into the clouds down, binding them to earth.

Joel laughed. "Something like that."

Buildings began to appear around them as they rounded the barrier, the terrain becoming the former town of Jackson. The barrier was still to the right and they continued on, though their pace was not quick, as if trying to make as little noise as possible. Ellie's eyes lingered on Joel's hand, never wavering too far from the 9mm pistol that hung on his belt.

Their speed had slowly decreased as they drew closer to Jackson's main gates, but now Joel halted completely, putting a hand out to stop Ellie. He drew his gun and tilted his head to the side in the way that he did when he was listening, listening very carefully. Ellie tried to listen to.

"What is it?" she asked. His face set in concentration and focus, he did not move. "Joel," she said and nudged his shoulder with a fist. "What is it? I don't hear anything."

He looked at her, and she knew what he was going to say. "Exactly," he said. "There should be sentries. At the least we should hear 'em."

 _It's the university all over again_ , Ellie thought. They had ridden into the university grounds on Callus, their horse. The Fireflies they had expected to find were all gone – only infected remained, until hunters had arrived in force.

"They were quiet when we got to the dam," Ellie added after a few moments of silence. "They just appeared above the gate."

Joel nodded and then looked around. The area they were in seemed to be the remnants of houses, untidy lawns that seemed back gardens. Porches that were rooted to the ground by grass seemed to all look the same, even with the light of day. He slowly walked up the path that split two rows of back-gardens, crouched and gun trained.  _I better –_

"Get your gun out," he finished. She smiled a little and retrieved the revolver from her backpack, then put it back on her shoulders. She kept up with Joel, as she always did, though she was never quite sure what he was doing.  _Joel, you're headed the wrong way._ She had barely finished the thought when she understood what he was doing. He wrapped his hands around a huge green trash container on wheels, pulling it back towards the wall. The rumble of the wheels was barely audible running over the thick blanket of grass underneath, only the muffled din of it being pulled over small vines. Joel pushed it up against the barricade, and climbed up.

"You're not as tall as you think you are," she said. The barricade was larger still, and even Joel jumping wouldn't let him reach the top.

"I know," he said, laughing a little, "that's why I'm boosting you up to have a look."

"Oh. I hate being boosted," she sulked, climbing up onto the container with him.

"You'd think you'd be used to it by now." He held out his hands.

"Shitty level design," she muttered, hoisting herself up. He held her high instead of pushing her to grab, her intent wasn't to go over. She had a look around the inside and her stomach fell. Blood spray on some walls, drops and pools in others. There were no bodies, no people that she could see. The church was the tallest building in the new settlement, they had seen it before the descent. She wanted to look more, but she felt Joel lowering her, and then she heard the hooves in the distance too. They jumped off the dumpster and moved it around, using it for cover. "Shit shit shit," she whispered.

"Anythin'?" Joel said, voice dropped low and quiet, his southern drawl even more pronounced.

"Nothin'," she said, mocking his dialect. His eyes dropped to the watch on his wrist, as though checking the time. "One day you'll tell me why you keep a broken watch."

"Hush," he said. Voices merged with the sound of hooves in the background, all male. Ellie recognised the sound as hooves on cement, and knew which road they were coming down; it led into the complex. She wondered if the doors were open. Joel poked his head out slightly to see and brought it back down quickly. 'If you can't see them,' he had once advised to her, 'don't wait. They might be seeing you. Then you lose your advantage.' At least Joel was consistent.

The voices and the hooves drew nearer. Ellie began to worry, her heart beating faster. What if bandits had raided the camp, executed Tommy and his wife, Maria, and taken control of the dam? She wondered what Tommy's last thoughts would have been of, if he had been forced to listen to his wife dying, if –

– it was Tommy's voice she could hear. She looked at Joel, who seemed to be having the same thoughts.

"Is that…?" she asked quietly.

"… the surrounding area," said the man. "If you can, take them alive. I won't have them trying to raid my goddamn town and –"

Joel stood up and began to walk down the path that led back onto the main residential block, with all of the front gardens, Ellie hurried behind him. "Tommy," he said, announcing himself. The men seemed startled and reached for their guns, but they recognised the pair on sight. Ellie recognised a few of their faces, and looked for Maria, though she wasn't there. She hoped she was okay.

Ellie had last left the dam on horse, angry at Joel for planning to leave her with a stranger. Angry at everyone who had every left her; her mother, Riley, Marlene, Tess. After Joel had caught up, they had left from a cabin and headed for the university; she had never said goodbye to Maria. She hoped to see her again.

"Joel," Tommy said, his voice half delight, half confusion. "I gotta admit I didn't expect to see ya again." His eyes lingered on Ellie for half a second, but she did not miss it. "You either, little lady."

He seemed older, his eyes had once wrinkled at the sides when he smiled, but now they seemed permanent. His blonde hair had dimmed a little, though not greyed. "You look like shit," Ellie said. He laughed and nodded.

They walk out onto the road. "We'll have time for reminiscing later," Tommy said. "There's been an attack. They rung the bells, we heard 'em from the dam – did you hear 'em?" They shook their head. "Never mind. Doesn't matter. They stopped after a while, but usually they'd give us an indicator that it was a mistake. Now we got nothing. Something's gone wrong. Infected, hunters. I don't know."

Tommy clutched the rifle in his hands tightly, though they seemed to shake. He was worried about Maria too – but she was a strong woman, Ellie knew she'd be fine. Rounded up the other survivors and taken them somewhere safe.

"Ellie had a look inside," Joel said. "I boosted her up. There's no one movin' in there." They began to walk, the horses at a steady trot. The road took them around the barricade a little more, and then they would find the entrance. Ellie could already see the unmanned turrets on the towers at each side of the entrance over the barrier. They overlooked the most open part of town, Ellie figured, so that they could easily repel scavengers.  _'Till now, I guess._

Joel still had his gun out, so Ellie kept hers out too.

"God damn it. That's what I was afraid of," he said. "Town protocol says that if they run into big trouble then they go into the basement of the church. That's where they'll be. Hopefully they took the bastards down with them. Any bodies?" Joel looked at Ellie and she shook her head. "Not sure what to make of that. Stay alert. Roger, Dex, go ahead and sweep the entrance."

Two men not on horseback nodded and hurried ahead, moving at a surprising speed for two crouched men, rifles at the ready. They seemed older than Tommy, but he was still pretty young, so that wasn't saying much. The beard was what aged Joel, and Tommy didn't sport any facial hair.  _You don't get old bold people_ , Ellie thought.  _You get old people, and you get bold people, but not both._  They kept moving despite the men sweeping ahead. There was just an uneasy silence as they kept on down the road. Joel and Ellie hung at the side of the caravan, still closest to the wall. He changed his 9mm for the hunting rifle slung over his back. "Expecting long-distance trouble?"

He looked at Ellie, eyebrow raised. "Always."

When they reached the entrance, the giant metal gates were dented, and a set of giant ladders that almost reached the top of the wall were mounted against it. There were three other ladders, paint flaked and metal rusting, that had probably fallen after being placed. There was a chainsaw too, and a small portable generator to match. They had tried to chainsaw the locks on the entrances first, it seemed, and failed, resolving to just use ladders.

"This is a crappy entrance point for an assault," Joel said.

Tommy was looking at the scene and didn't turn around for a few moments. He swung his legs around and dismounted from the horse, rubbing the back of its head when he reached the floor. He wore brown khakis, and underneath his bulletproof vest Ellie could see a deep blue shirt slashed by two giant stripes of white. He must have been hot in there, and sweat beads dripped on his brow. The sun was still steadily beating down, the few white clouds that were present were fat and content and not going anywhere in the still wind. Ellie didn't know much about seasons, but it was hotter than was normal at this time of year.

He wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand and nodded, "Yeah. This was probably a diversion. I hope – I hope Maria saw through it."

"One of the ladders is still up," said one of the other men on horses. Ellie didn't recognise him, though his face was partially obscured by the shadow cast by his fedora. "May be there's still some of them in there. Waitin' for us."

Tommy shrugged. "More likely that Dex and Roger put it up because they don't got a key." He reached into his pocket and brought out a giant wheel of keys, from Ellie's distance it seemed a solid mass of writhing metal. They jingled lightly as he searched through them, old keys and new keys, small and large, silver and red. Ellie grew bored watching them and looked around.

From behind her she heard Joel rasp quietly, "Don't stray. Stay where I can see you." She nodded without turning back. Through a glassless window she peered, looking in. She overlooked a worktop, looking into an open-plan room from the kitchen. There were scissors on the worktop closest to her. She smiled and looked back, Joel wasn't looking in her direction directly, but she could tell he was still watching. She reached inside and grabbed the scissors, tucked them into the front of her trousers.  _I'll give them to Joel as a surprise,_ she thought, half-laughing. Sometimes he picked up the strangest things. But Ellie could see the use in scissors.

There was a thick metal clang sound and rung out low and deep. Ellie turned quickly, startled, and saw Tommy sliding a big key out of the last padlock, and the last segment of wrought metal chain fell to the floor. A few men had dismounted from their horses, helping Tommy loose the chains. Joel stood back, eyes half on Ellie, half sweeping the other side of the road, overlooking the shops. He was still holding his hunting rifle. It was lucky Joel was a good shot, as it had no scope. Not that they had ever needed one – if they were far enough away to snipe, they were far enough away to avoid.

Joel waved Ellie back and she jogged back over to him. "Keep ready," he said, checking the clip from his own.

"I always do," she said, and they moved in. The atmosphere among the small group of six changed quickly, the remaining two came down from their mounts and trained their rifles at the ready. The sound of ammo rounds being restored clicked about for a few moments, and they moved in, Joel and Ellie at the rear. The gates screeched as they slid them along the ground, but only wide enough to admit them one at a time. The man in the fedora held the gates as Ellie passed through, dipping his hat to her as she passed.  _Weirdo_.

Ellie held her gun by her side, darting around as Joel swept the immediate surrounding area, hunting rifle trained ahead of him. He peered into buildings around him, the only sound the light footsteps of the group branching out. The sun light up the entire area, but it only served to make things seem darker. The shadows that were cast seemed darker, longer. The sun dragged itself across the sky and Ellie saw shadows creep with it. "Joel," she said. "I think there's –"

Gunshots boomed and exploded in the area, a fire fight erupting from the silence. Ellie felt her collar tugged and was on the ground, Joel standing over her. She crawled into cover behind him and readied her gun. The hunters fired from ahead of the street using old cars as cover, Joel and she stood at the side of a house. Joel peeped out from the side and fired his gun once. There was a scream in the distance, a woman, as the bullet burst through their clothing. Ellie doubted they were wearing armour.

There was a crack from behind her and she span, seeing a figure with an outstretched gun, and firing it once. He fell to the ground and she kept her eyes trained ahead. Joel turned and saw the body, placing a hand on her shoulder. "You did good, baby girl," he said, smiling. She stared at the body for a few minutes, and then saw it move again. She raised her revolver again and marched over to it. The man reached for his shotgun and she put a bullet in his head. Around the corner of the house she heard more whispers. She peaked around it and saw them – they lifted a rifle and fired, though she snapped her head back quickly.

"Ellie, quick," she heard Joel say, waving at her. She rushed back and vaulted into the house through a window, and he followed her. They crouched down and watched as they saw their shapes move around the corner. Joel led her forward in the house and another shot rang out hard from behind them. One of them at the window, Joel and her fired at him. One of the bullets caught him in the shoulder and he fell, though another took his place. They ran up the old wooden stairs with shots raining on them. Upstairs, Joel looked – three doors.

"Lucky dip," Joel said, and headed for the door straight ahead. He rammed the door with shoulder and hip, hands working the old doorknob. It gave way, breaking at the lock. The room was dark, windows boarded up. "There ain't many of 'em," Joel said. "Take out the ones coming for us, and we can get out of here." Gunshots hung in the distance, shouts from voices Ellie didn't recognise. She stared, silent, for a moment. "Tommy will be alright," Joel said.

He took a chair and jammed it through the handle of the door, locking it, and then flipped a table to serve as cover. "Come over here Ellie," he said. She was looking at pictures that hung on the walls. A baby held by two parents, an older brother standing at their side. " _Ellie_ ," he said again. She snapped back and came over beside him, readying her gun and reloading. There was no entrance save the barred door in front of them. Outside she heard voices.

"They're in the last one," said a female voice.

"We'll take them out," a male whispered back, though not quietly enough, "and then make our way back around to the church, flank them out with fire."

The door came under repeated blows, shouts deep calling from the outside. Joel swapped out his hunting rifle for a shotgun and Ellie took the rifle. They trained their sights on the entry, steadying their hand on the edge of the table. Ellie felt a hand on her shoulder and looked at Joel, who was still looking at the door. She nodded once and then felt the hand lift.

The chair snapped as the door flew open, three men lined up, and together Ellie and Joel mowed them down. The first's head snapped back from the impact, and the second stumbled at his side. The last tried to get into cover, Joel's shotgun rendered useless at such long range, but Ellie put a bullet in her collarbone. Blood jutted out with her scream, and she died. On the floor, one continued to writhe.

Ellie listened carefully to hear if there were any still on the stairs, out of sight.  _No body_ , she thought. She looked at Joel and he nodded. She could almost make out a smile buried deep in his unkempt facial hair. If she couldn't see the grin on his mouth, she discerned it from the crinkle of his eyes. Joel moved first, over to where the man was moaning softly and trying to run. Shotgun shells buried deep in his chest, he would not survive no matter what Joel decided to do.

"Please," the man pleaded. "Please… please…"

Joel took out his 9mm and fired a single bullet into his head.

"That was cold," Ellie said.

"Him or us."

Ellie nodded, and they moved back out.

The air was still loud with the sound of gunshots but it didn't take long to clear up the remnants of the hunter force. Joel and Ellie moved around, flanking them and taking them out without their knowledge, until eventually they merged with Tommy.

"They're in the church like you said," Joel said to Tommy.

They were careful on the way to the church, though it was quiet and no more hunters appeared. "The force was dying," Joel said to Ellie as they trailed at the back of the moving caravan of people towards the church. "That's why they came for us. They couldn't afford to just run. They'd lost too much already."

Ellie nodded. "You say it like it's a familiar situation."

"Like I said, I've been on both sides."

Joel wasn't a 'good guy', Ellie knew. She doubted there were any real good people in the world, didn't know if there ever were. It was everyone for themselves; everyone alone except Ellie. She had Joel. That made him a good guy to her. People were forced to do terrible things on the outside, but she and Joel hadn't been reduced to anything totally abhorrent. They didn't kill in cold blood. She wondered again about St. Mary's Hospital and if anything happened that she should know. She looked at Joel, who was walking in a stupor, and considered asking him.  _No_ , she thought.  _Not now._  She thought then of David and of his group; reduced to killing and cannibalism, she felt angry. He was dead now, she thought.  _Gone. I killed the shit._

The patrolmen named Dex and Roger were ordered to sweep the inside of the church, whilst the remainder including Ellie and Joel made their way to the back of the church, the entrance to the basement. "If there's others they'll be here," Joel told her quietly, dropping his voice low and speaking close to her head. "Keep focused."

"I always do, Joel," she sighed happily.

The back of the church was in a cemetery. Gravestones provided cover for hunters, so Tommy ordered that they separate and make sure there were no stragglers before they opened into the basement. "Last thing we need is an ambush," he whispered. They split up, carefully searching the bushes and the gravestones. They worked in groups of two. Ellie and Joel went together, searching the nearby undergrowth. She looked at the buildings around them too, squinting hard at their windows to make sure nobody was in cover. Ellie held her breath, feeling like she was being watched. At last, when the search was thorough enough, they felt safe enough to proceed.

"We made it, Ellie," Joel said beside her. He wasn't smiling, but there was a happiness in the air. They could help Tommy rebuild the town, forge a place in it. Joel would teach her to swim, to play games. He would one day sing to her. Tommy thudded on the metal shutter three times and then paused, and then three times again. There was a heavy pause, and then a bang from the other side. Tommy repeated the three-pause-three pattern and heard noises from the other side. There were six clangs as bolts were undone and then Tommy stood back, letting the door swing open. It wasn't Maria that answered, as Ellie expected.

"Fred," Tommy said and pulled him into an embrace. "I'm sorry we took so long." They patted each another's back. Ellie saw people inside crowd around the entrance, and the man with the fedora headed inside, clearly looking for someone.

"Tommy, we thought you were never going to get here. There are still some – not many – they –"

"We got 'em. We got those sons of bitches. You remember my brother, Joel?"

"Yeah, I remember him. Her too," he nodded at Ellie. She stared at him. There was an uneasiness in him, something he was keeping secret. Joel still had his hand on his rifle, she saw.  _He can feel it too._  They had spent enough time in difficult situations for Ellie to be able to accurately gauge his stages of readiness.  _Stage three_ , she reckoned.

"Good. Where's Maria? I've gotta – what?"

Fred's expression shifted noticeably. His gait faltered and he looked down, an arm reaching up to scratch his shoulder. "Tommy, when they attacked they, she was in the middle of town – they…"

"No.  _No, no…_  where is she?  ** _WHERE IS SHE?!_** " He rushed past Fred, into the basement. It was light inside, Ellie could see from the outside. Joel made to follow and they both walked down the steps. Tommy was off inside, and Joel had to run in to keep up. Inside there were maybe six people left. Six of what had once been a hundred, a real settlement, now they were a group. Bodies were covered up with makeshift blankets. Clothing, sheets, curtains. Tommy was demanding to know when someone drew his gaze.

It was a man, older than even Joel. Tommy grabbed him by the collar. "Where the fuck is she?" Tommy's eyes was red and puffy, hair frayed and wet with sweat. The man did nothing, but his eyes betrayed him. Tommy threw him off and went down to a blanket. Out of it were brown boots that even Ellie recognised. Slowly, he pulled back the cover. Her face was ruined. A mess of blood, though Ellie could still make out the short blonde hair that usually slicked back over her head, to just before her spine. She had been shot. Ellie looked at Joel, who was staring blankly at his screaming, crying brother. His fingers rubbed his dysfunctional watch, and then he closed his eyes and lowered his head. Ellie didn't want to cry, she didn't, though she could feel it coming on. She tried hard not to.  _I won't cry. I didn't even know her._ She thought about Riley.

Joel moved over to his brother and crouched down beside him, placing a hand on his back. Tommy flinched instantly, but didn't shrug it off. His head moved from side to side, up and down whilst he wailed. People tried hard to avert their eyes.

"I struggled for a long time with survivin'," Joel had said for felt like a long, long time ago. Ellie had known what he meant. Maybe Tommy did too. "No matter what – you keep finding something to fight for." He was right. Tommy  _had_  found something to fight for. For the settlement, for Maria. She was gone. She was a bloody red mess covered up by an old yellowing sheet. Tommy had lost what he was fighting for. It was all Ellie could do to not go over and hug Joel, for she was very much afraid of losing him too.

* * *

**Afterword:** Thanks for making it this far! It's a lot of fun to write these, though sometimes they take a while because they can get  _big_. I hope you stick with me in this one. I'm trying to stay true to the themes of the book, expand upon them and say something of my own as well. These characters are ones to love to be around, and their story is one worth telling. Keep going! It's you guys that keep me doing this!


	2. JOEL I

* * *

**JOEL I**

* * *

The air felt heavy and wet. That, among other things, kept Joel from resting easily. It had been twenty years since Joel's last good sleep – even when he and Tess were 'safe' back in Boston, any noise had been enough to stir him. There was no noise outside now, everything that Joel could hear came from the fourteen year old who lay on the other side of the room, bundled in pink blankets. He listened to Ellie breathing. She snored - and loudly – just like Sarah had.  _Hope you're dreaming, baby girl._ Ellie had never slept well either when they were on the road, but being at the settlement meant more safety than sleeping in the old car they got from Bill, tucked into the side of a motorway or under a bridge, covered with leaves. Ellie was in the same room as Joel, per his request. He didn't want her too far from him – he expected a fight, as he often got from her, but there was nothing. She seemed happy.

He was very much aware of the t-shirt he wore. It clung to him with sweat, though the cover he had used was light and rough. Ellie had taken the other bed, the one with silk sheets. "You won't like it," he said the night they picked their house. "You'll slide off the bed during the night." She had shrugged off his suggestion to remove the sheets and climbed into bed. It wasn't too long after that the snoring had started. In a way it made him relax. For the first two nights he had slept little, though enough to sustain him, but when he hadn't he lay awake, listening. Ellie's breathing was slow and deep, and he found some solace in reproducing it. He took breaths when Ellie did. He thought about what he would be doing if he hadn't saved her in Salt Lake City.  _Probably put a bullet in my head already._   _I wouldn't live with myself._ He'd lost Sarah, Tess, he wouldn't lose her too.

"You'd just come after her," he had said to Marlene. His mind had spun back to that night a lot, even more so as they drew closer to Jackson. He had known as soon as Marlene lowered her gun that he would kill her. He had thought about whether it was a good idea, whether he would regret it. Joel felt deep confliction about putting a bullet in Marlene, but regret was not one of them.  _She would have just come after her._ To think Marlene had helped raise her, served as family to her.  _No_.  _I'm her family now. I'm what she's got left._  If Ellie knew the truth, she would break. Though, of course, Joel knew that Ellie knew the truth.

The precise details were between Joel and the dead Fireflies that stood between him and the only light in his life, but there was a level on which Ellie knew the truth. She had woken up in a hospital gown, Joel had been covered in blood. He was already pushing the car to its limits, and yet he pushed harder on the accelerator. Ellie had rolled her eyes at him in the car. "There ghosts chasing us, Joel?" Ellie had asked one day. He took few breaks from driving. He had told her there was no real rush to get to Tommy's, but he wanted to get there before spring.  _Liar_ , he thought.  _You're running from, not running towards._

He clambered out of bed, pushing away the damp sheets. "Some fresh air will do me good," he murmured. Changing his shirt he felt the relief immediately. He wiped himself down with a towel before pulling a new one over his head. The air still clung to him, but at least his t-shirt didn't. He pulled on some jeans and made his way outside, the breeze on his face was nice. Across the street he could see the man in the fedora.

He hadn't been looking at Joel at first; the fedora made it hard to see his eyes. He lifted his hand and waved at Joel, the other resting on a bust of a man nobody cared about; it had been there for a long time. Joel wondered how long  _he_  had been. "Can I help you?" Joel asked.

"Aw, hello, stranger," he said. His voice was quiet, the words seemed to run together, a voice like silk. He thought of Ellie lying in her sheets; content with the little she got. "Naw, I don't think you can," he said. The man's drawl was discernibly Texan, just like Joel's. Still, Texas was a big state.

Joel walked closer to the man, checking the road before he walked across it, more habit than anything. The night was quiet and dark, though Joel expected the sun to come up soon, and people to exit their houses. The population of Jackson now reached twelve, so the noise levels were not likely to change. Six were on guard duty, he wondered if this man was one of them. Joel didn't like the way his watch seemed focused on his house.

"I'm worried, I gotta say. This here'll be my last day in Jackson. My last day as a member of this group," he said. Closer, Joel could see him more clearly; his face was clean-shaven and skin smooth. He was not greatly handsome but there was nothing plain about him. Well past the age of forty, maybe even older than Joel, but unwrinkled. They was an endearing quality to his smile, something that you wanted to lend trust too. Joel hadn't lent trust to nobody for some time, and that wouldn't change on account of a nice smile.

"What's troublin' you?"

"Your brother Tommy," he said. He looked sad under the flickering street lights. The electricity supply was dwindling from the dam, but no one was willing to go back without Tommy. "Three days and he ain't left that basement. But the good lord is what pushed him in there, and it'll be what's keeping him too."

 _A holy man?_ "Religious?"

"Religious?" he asked, as if the word was foreign to him. "Naw, I'm not religious. A believer, maybe. Don't ask any of the settlers 'round these parts 'bout my beliefs, though. Some of them would like to spit on me. Dex – you know Dex? Tommy sent him out scouting… well he once  _did_  spit on me. He spat in my face. I wiped it away and he told me that I should have left the spit there, 'cause it suited me. Ah, he wasn't a bad man, Dex. He just had his own beliefs too. May he rest in peace."

"Dex died?"

"Dex died when we attacked the bandits. All the Lords' plan," he said. "Anyway, we zipped up the barricade. I fixed the entrance point the hunters used to get in here. Turns out the attack on the front gate were just a distraction. Ah well. People have been talking about leaving Jackson anyway."

"Hunters'll find the dam any day now," Joel said. "Chalk-full of supplies, I guess."

"Here's hoping they don't find you. There's only so much fixing a man can do."

"Fences aren't much like people are. They're harder to fix."

"Oh, don't I know it! That used to be my job. I'd fix people. I'd mend their broken arms, I'd give them drugs to help ease their broken hearts."

"A doctor?"

"Just so. I don't get much time to practice medicine these days. A degree don't mean  _shit_ ," he said, laughing. His laugh was all there, Joel sensed no fakery, no charade.

"Who are you, anyhow?" Joel asked.

"Oh, forgive me, son. My name is Ora. Frances Ora," he held out his hand. Joel hesitated at first, and then shook it.  _No need to make an enemy._  "The people just call me the Doc, usually. If they call me anything at all. Only when they need my mind," he said, his voice low and drawling. Black hair seemed to peep up from underneath the hat he wore on his head; loose trails.  _Probably greying in there somewhere,_  he thought.

"Joel," he said.

"Aw, I know who you are," he said, his smile too hard to be sincere. "Joel and Ellie. Tommy told me a little 'bout you, first time you came 'round the dam. I gotta say, I admire your spirit. How did your trip to see the Fireflies go?"

"It was empty. Fireflies were all gone. Turned out that their leader died, so we came back here."

"From Colorado?" he looked suspicious, but there was nothing sinister on his face, just inquisitive. Curiosity was dangerous. "Took you an awful long time to get back here from eastern Colorado. Why did you gotta see them, anyhow?"

"Visiting an old friend."

Frances Ora tilted his head inquisitively at then nodded. "I get it, I get it. Don't worry, you'll get nothing more than some idle curiosity from me. But in any case I gotta be off. Sun's comin' up and I wanna be gone by the time the good people wake," he tipped his fedora a little. "I hope we meet each other 'gain, Joel. And your little girl. She is  _your_  little girl, ain't she?"

"Yeah," Joel said. "Yeah, she is."

"Ah, no matter where they come from – they're ours."  _He knows Ellie ain't mine. How? Tommy?_  Joel didn't say anything. Ora's eyes found their way back to the house. They lingered there for a few seconds. "Nice speaking to you, Joel." He tipped his hat and smiled, then walked off towards the exit, a backpack and a rifle slung over his back.

Joel went back to the house and upstairs, into the bedroom again. Ellie was still sleeping. There was no expression on her face. She had let her hair down and it fell loose over her shoulders, though her fringe still slid across half of her forehead. She had longer hair than Joel thought she would have, but she had always kept it up, practical as she was. He decided to go see if Tommy was alright.

Making his way through the quiet streets was uneasy. He passed only one sentry – most of them patrolled around the inside of the wall. He stopped the sentry, though Joel could tell it made the man uneasy. He didn't want to fall behind on his routine, especially not because of someone that – for all he was a brother of Tommy – was a stranger. "What happened to Dex?" he asked.

"Rifle shot to the head," he said, shifting between his feet. "During the attack, when you and that lil' girl headed off, he, me and the doc – the guy with the fedora, pale skin – went off. I left just for a sec, came back and found the doc cradling his body. Nothing he could do," he said. "We lost a good man that day. We lost a lot of good men that day."

Joel didn't think any more of it, though he had a good enough grasp of the situation. When he got to the back of the church he saw them. Graves had been dug up, fresh dirt mounded over them. Conspicuously sitting there was one hole in the earth left. One grave, seven feet down. Practice was to dig graves deeper now, Joel knew, to safeguard against infected digging, as they had been known to know. He had buried a lot of people. He remembered burying Sarah. He remembered digging the grave. The ground had been rock hard and they had chipped away at it for hours… what should have been seven feet was only four.

The entrance was locked again, locked from the inside, though it didn't feel secure enough to have been barred. Joel checked his bag, found a shiv. He rummaged it around the inside of the lock, not caring much if he broke it.  _Come on…_  He raked the shiv up and down the inside of the door, hoping it wouldn't break before the door clicked open, and then he heard the door creak and he pulled the doors open. The basement was darker than the outside was; it was thick with alcohol – whisky, Joel reckoned – and sweat. Suddenly the outside seemed desirable, almost pleasant. Small piles of sick and bile on the floor. He strained his eyes, looking for Tommy, and that's when he saw them.

Tommy lay beside Maria, his head away Joel and beside the ruin that was Maria. He is clutching her hand and her thumb with his own. "She's so cold," he whispered through tears, his voice barely a whimper, rocking slightly. "So cold. So cold."

"Tommy," Joel began, though he didn't know how to finish. In this room was God: there were shrines to him everywhere. Remnants of old religions that few still clung to. Joel had never thought to ask what god Ora worshiped but it made no matter. All religions were just words now in this godless world. In the beginning, after Sarah had died and been buried, Joel had lain at her side. He had cradled her underneath the motorway. Infected had come and Tommy had kept him alive.  _It's my job now to keep him alive._

"She's so fucking cold," Tommy said. He didn't look to Joel, his eyes were stuck on Maria, stuck on the past, stuck on a corpse. "She hates being cold." She  _hated_  being cold, Tommy, he wanted to say, but he couldn't say that. He sat down near where he was, leaning against a wall. He sat there for what seemed like an hour, listening to Tommy mumble. "You never got to meet Maria, not properly. You'd have liked her."

"I know, Tommy. I bet I would."

"There ain't enough of us anymore," he said, sitting up at last. He wasn't as drunk as Joel expected, quickly looking around. Empty bottles everywhere, he had probably ran out over the past few days and sobered up pretty quickly. The air tasted of old whisky and new piss. He wiped the sweat from his face with his old green jacket, which was crusted with snot. "The settlement's too big. Ain't enough of us to maintain it. Electric's goin' out slowly. Bandits'll find the place soon. Nothing we can do. We gotta go, don't we?" He looked at Joel.

Joel nodded slowly. "We gotta bury her."

"Took you longer to bury Sarah."

Joel flinched – it always hurt more to hear it aloud. He had  _thought_  that she would be okay. He didn't know why, but he had.  _I didn't even think about her not being okay. I thought if she went I'd go to._ He didn't, but he'd wanted to. "Yeah," was all he said.

"This is what it feels like, Joel. To be alone. This is what it looks like too."

"You ain't alone –"

"Oh but I am. I am. You got Ellie. I don't got no one. I'm alone in a world full of people. Even  _they_ ain't alone. The damn infected. They crowd in groups. I wonder if they ever kill each other, eat each other. The person's still in there somewhere, I reckon," he said. "If you listen carefully you can hear 'em talk sometimes. Like something's tryin' to talk through 'em." He dragged himself to his feet, stumbling a little. Joel was still resting against a wall, feet lying flat and straight in front of him. Tommy wandered over and stood in front a giant statue of an outdated god that had been used to block the entrance to what Joel imagined was the main section of the church. Once, faith had been a way to keep people sane; keep them from imagining the black void of death. Now it protected them too: it kept them from an early death.

"There's no saving them infected, Tommy."

"I know," he rushed in, almost interrupting. "There ain't any saving for the hunters either. Or damn FEDRA. They infected infested this world, ruined it, the infected  _caused_ this," he waved towards Maria but averted his eyes. "But  _men…_ they maintain the fucking ruin. They keep it up." He bit his bottom lip and closed his eyes hard, tears falling down his dirty face. "You know something, Joel? No infected have ever killed somebody I love. When this started, they came and they destroyed our lives, but it was never them. When you need to rely on someone to cause death, and pain, and misery, and break people, you call on other people. Mankind is the deciding force for the ruin in this world."

Joel nodded slowly, and he knew it was true. He thought of Sarah… even Tess had died by the bullet, not the bite. And Sam, the little kid he and Ellie had paired up with. He had been infected.  _Maybe people just allowed the circumstances for that to happen._ He didn't want to think too hard about it; Joel wasn't a thinker. Tommy had always been the thinker, the one that should have gone to university. Joel was a do-er, Joel was a survivor.

They talked until the sun started to spill into the basement through the open doors. Joel could hear the flowing air outside and longed to leave, but he wouldn't leave without Tommy. He had to decide to leave when he wanted to.

"Just you and me," Tommy said, without any indication. "You and me bury her. Nobody else. The settlers… they didn't  _like_  her Joel. And I know you didn't know her, but… you can be there for me."

"I will be."

Joel nodded and stood up. It took Tommy a long time to find the strength to pick her up, but he did. Together they carried her, a leg and an arm each, up the stairs and out the back into the breeze and the sun. The cool wind licked gently at Joel's neck as they lowered her into the grave. "Be careful," Tommy said.

"Be careful," Joel had said when they lowered Ellie into the ground.

"I hate what this god damn world does to us, Joel," he said, crying. Joel went over to his baby brother and put an arm around him. "If people would just fucking pull themselves together we could rebuild a place. Start things up the way they could be. Fuck, we managed it here." He paused and took a deep sigh. "If we could just find a  _cure, a vaccine_ … I'd give anything." He stared at Maria's body and Joel watched him, knowing at that moment that Tommy could never find out the truth about Ellie. Tommy's eyes fluttered, suddenly remembering. "Wait – the girl. She's immune. Did the Fireflies – what did they say?"

Joel stared at his brother for a moment before he replied. His brother was searching Joel's eyes desperately for some hope, but Joel couldn't give it to him. "They'd tried," he said. "They had other people who were – immune. There was nothin' they could gain from Ellie. Nothing they could gain from any of 'em."

Tommy looked down at once, faltering.  _I'm sorry, Tommy. I won't put Ellie at risk._  He felt a true grievance that he couldn't rely on his brother. The brother that had once put himself at dire risk to die for Sarah and him by holding back a door, the brother he could no longer fully trust.

 _This world has fucked us all,_  Joel thought.

"We gotta keep going," Tommy said. "We gotta get out of here. We take that little girl and we head off over those mountains. Sneak into a quarantine zone. Where was it you were held up?"

"Boston. Ellie and I came from Boston."

"We could head back there. All the way over on the east coast," he said. "Long way. Would you be up for the journey?"

"All Ellie and I know is the damn road. We were hoping to get off it for a while."

"So what do you say?"

"I gotta speak to Ellie."

"You really care 'bout that girl don't ya?"

"More than you'll ever know."


	3. JOEL II

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** Here we are again. A new chapter of  _The Last of Them._ Exciting. This chapter is quite lengthy, but pushes the plot forward quite considerably. It was difficult to write, as there's some journeying, but there's danger lurking around every corner for Joel, Ellie and Tommy. I look forward to hearing comments and feedback on this one. Let me know what you liked, what you didn't like. Read and review, favourite and follow. Make me the happiest little boy that you ever did see. And without any more rambling...

* * *

**JOEL II**

* * *

"Ellie," he said, rolling her with his arm. He only had to say her name once when her eyelids sprang apart, and rolled around. She reached deep under her pillow where, Joel had no doubt, there was a fully loaded revolver.  _Even in a supposedly safe place, she's cautious,_ he thought. Kids born into this world were either raised to be cautious, or they weren't raised for very long. He thought of Ellie's mother, and of Marlene. They had raised her well. "Don't worry, there's no danger," he said quickly.

"Oh," she said, wearily, though her eyes were open and looking around. She sat up, sliding slightly on the silk sheets beneath her. She had tossed the covers onto the floor while Joel had been away with Tommy. They had decided to leave, and try to do so quietly. Joel was to fetch Ellie and return to Tommy's home, and then they would leave the town. They hadn't given much thought to where they would go, but starting on the road again would be the hardest part.

Joel gave her a look for a few seconds, and then she seemed to grow sad. She let her head fall against the wooden headboard that rose above her. "Yeah," he said.

"I thought we'd be staying longer," she said. Joel didn't like to see her so forlorn, but there was little that could be done. Jackson wasn't safe, and Tommy could sense that the settlers were growing unruly with Tommy's absentee management. No sympathy in this world – none. Joel didn't blame them; there wasn't much time for sympathy. Joel wished he could rally them again and rebuild. He wished that things could be different.

"Sorry, baby girl," he said. "Things ain't great."

She nodded. "Yeah, I guess. Get out so I can get dressed."  _She's back._  He laughed and mussed her hair. In the light it almost seemed red.

"I'll wait downstairs," Joel said, sliding off the bed. "Damn I hate those sheets."

"I like 'em," he heard from behind.

"You're a teenager. You like anything I don't."

Sarah had disagreed with Joel on almost everything; she had dragged him to see terrible movies that he did not enjoy ("it's an experience!"), she made him listen to awful music ("you might like it!"), and she introduced him to her friends that he often (always) did not like. He looked back on the bad films and the worse music, and he missed them.

Ellie came downstairs two at a time, asking if he needed ammo for a revolver. "No," he answered. She had a bow slung over her backpack, nestled through a loop of string for quick draw. The ridged bottoms of two dozen arrows sprouted out over the back of her head, held in a quiver. "You sticking with the bow?"

"Yeah, I'm a better shot with it," she said. It was lighter, had no recoil and, he had to admit, she was a good shot – much more adept than he was with a bow. His own treatise with the weapon was inconsistent, to say the least.

Back in Philadelphia she had saved his life when a clicker had come on him without warning, firing an arrow deep into its head. "WOAH!" she had said. "Did you see that, Joel? I got that fucker! I didn't expect that to work."

"That's not reassuring, Ellie," he said. They had moved on quickly, crouched low, alert for more clickers. She had been on a high for the rest of the day.

"Revolver loaded anyway?"

"Yup," she said. Ellie's hair was tied back again – always the pragmatist. She wore a brownish t-shirt, white sleeves coming from underneath that she wore no matter the weather to cover the scar on her arm. Her trousers were dark green, khakis, and bordered on worn-out old black boots.

"Let's go then," he said, and they left the house for the last time. Ellie seemed to look back at the house as they left, Joel noticed. "I'll find us a home one day, Ellie," he said. "A place where we can stay. Make our own. I promise you."

Ellie smiled a little, looking up at Joel, who seemed to tower over her. "I know," she said.

Joel expected to see at least some people, but the streets were bare – most of the old cars had been moved away to be melted down to forge the barricade, so the streets of Jackson always seemed sparse. The sun was creeping slowly across the sky, so he expected at least some movement from the people in their houses, but there was nothing. "This place isn't creepy at all," Ellie said.

"Better than some of the places we've been."

"I could have sworn those infected demon monkeys were gonna attack us, Joel," Ellie said. "I had my gun at the ready, and then they just never came."

Joel remembered it well, and pushed it to the back of his mind. Within half an hour of those monkeys, Joel had grievously injured himself. Only thanks to Ellie did he make it. She nursed him until fall fell and winter came, cold and white. Joel was not looking forward to the next winter, though he hoped to be in a warm state by then. He had half a year to go.

When Joel and Ellie rounded the corner they saw people rolling into Tommy's home. A group of five travelled together, pushing the door to the two-floor home and heading in.  _What's going on?_  he wondered.

"What the fuck happened to leaving quietly?"

"Not sure," Joel murmured, but they kept going.

They walked up the street until they reached the house Tommy had shared with Maria for near a year. It sat in the middle of the point of intersection in a T-junction, looking down the one long street. It was not the largest house on the block, but it was the tidiest – grass had died long ago on the others, but it seemed that Tommy and Maria had made some conscious effort to restore a semblance of normality to the modest little house. The white bricks looked to be newly painted; though it hadn't been finished.

From outside, Joel and Ellie could hear the murmurs of the people. The restless in the room approached hysteria, and half of them looked to have been awake all night. The murmurs dissipated and broke apart quickly when they entered the room. "Tommy," Joel called. If it hadn't been for the whispering gaggle in the living room, the stairs would have been the first thing Joel had noticed. "Tommy!"

There was the heavy thud of exaggerated footsteps from upstairs to show progress, and then slowly Joel traced Tommy making his way out of his room until he saw him at the top of the stairs. "Hey," he said coming down the stairs. Tommy left his rifle and his huge, stuffed backpack on the stairs and rounded them to speak to the people sitting and standing in the living room. "I'm glad all of you are here, though I'm not sure why," he started. "I've got to tell –"

Somewhere in the crowd, someone cleared their throat, loudly. And then he rose. It was Roger, the guard that Joel had spoken to only a few hours before. In those few hours he had managed to look twice as tired and thrice as polished. Tommy stopped, and Roger started to speak. "Hello. Tommy, I speak on behalf of everybody here." The people of the crowd averted their eyes from Tommy. Some looked around, some focused on the floor. Joel looked for Ellie and saw that she was tracing the outlines of books in the corner of the room, occupied.  _No doubt she's listening though. She's always listening._ "We value your commitment to this settlement. We are mourning Maria too, we miss her. In a lot of ways she was the driving unifying force behind this settlement. She brought us all together in a way that none of us ever could." Joel had the uneasy feeling that 'us' meant 'Tommy', though he himself seemed oblivious to that.  _Once you were the brains of the family, Tommy. You were gonna go to university. Guess I went to a university first, eh?_

"Roger, sit down, I don't know –"

"What they're saying is," Ellie chimed in from the corner of the room, still holding a book. She looked angry, Joel edged towards her. "They don't want you here. You've been great but they liked Maria more." Tommy's eyes seemed to tear up. Once he had been strong. This had defeated Tommy, it was worse than things had been before. Joel had seen his brother in dark places, places where no mind should have to go... but it was now that he seemed truly hopeless.  _Tommy wanted to leave, not be exiled._

"Is that true?" he asked the crowd.

"Not just you," said a female voice from the crowd. "Your brother, and his kid too."

"Yeah, well you can take your fucking settlement and shove it right up your ass," Ellie spat. Joel put a hand around her shoulder to quieten her, but she continued. "We were just fucking leaving."

"This settlement would be  _nothing_  without me," Tommy said. "The dam was  _my_  idea, and now it's lost. You ain't taking it back if there's someone in there. You fucking…"

Joel moved forwards with Ellie and put his hand on Tommy's, who shrugged it off. He continued to spit insults at the uneasy crowd. They had nothing to say; they were sheep. One of them was behind the attempted coup, unaware that Tommy was going to leave, but they were concealing themselves. Someone coated themselves in the guise of a sheep. Joel looked for the wolf among the sheep, but nobody was bold. Nobody could hold his eyes. Ellie left the house, slamming the door hard behind her. "Come on, Tommy," Joel said. Tommy nodded.

"Enjoy your future lives as fucking clickers," he said, grabbed his rifle and bag, and they were gone.

Tommy was quiet as they made their way out of the town. Two guards opened the gates for them after a quick scan of the outside. They didn't say anything, nor did Tommy. Even Ellie was quiet, though she'd spoken to Joel since they left the house. Surprisingly, she hadn't yet asked where they were going. Maybe she didn't think Joel knew yet. Either way Joel was glad – he wanted to raise the topic with her when they were out of the settlement.  _Ears in the damn walls, I bet._

They walked up the winding path, through the abandoned town of Jackson, cars in ruin and weeds growing through great cracks in the pavement. The walls of old shops were abandoned, their merchandise all gone. The first year was the year of theft and violence; this was before FEDRA. They came later.

Ellie plodded ahead from Joel. "Ellie," he said, calling her back. She turned and he waved her down towards him. She stopped walking.

"I wanna go to the dam, Joel," Tommy said. There was no tone in his voice, no expression.

 _It'll be overrun by now. Looted._ "No way in hell, Tommy," he said.

"There are things there that I need."

"What? What's there that you need? Is there food?" Tommy was silent. "No. It's not worth the risk," he glanced over at Ellie who was coming closer to them. "It'll be overrun. Hunters, damn infected. We ain't goin' back there, Tommy."

"If you don't come I am goin' myself, Joel."

"What is it, Tommy? Photos?" More silence. "Your memories will be enough. They won't fade away."

"Are you tellin' me you remember every detail about Sarah? After twenty years?"

"I remember my little girl's voice," he said. "I remember the pyjamas she wore. I remember the films she dragged me to. I did not forget." Joel's voice wasn't angry, it was rueful. "Tommy, we aren't going back."

"I think Tommy's right," Ellie said.

"What? Ellie –"

"Ain't you glad you got that picture of you and Sarah now? I got a photo of my mom in my bag," she said. "I don't know about you, Joel," she shrugged, "but that's what makes me feel different from, y'know,  _them_."

Joel did know – she meant the infected. "God damn it," he said, turning away from them. "You're willing to die for a bunch of old pictures?"

Ellie interrupted again, "We haven't been willing to die for anything so far and we're still here."

She made Joel think of the hospital. If Ellie had been awake, she would have been willing to die for the small chance of a cure. She would have been willing to die because of survivor's guilt – a burden that should not be on her shoulders. When Joel had saved her, he had lessened that load for her.  _You don't need to do this,_  he had thought,  _and I'm making the decision for you._

Joel bit his bottom lip hard. "God damn it," he repeated. "Okay. Okay."

They didn't have to adjust their path at all; there was only one major path in and out of the city. They followed the road down until they came to the I-80 bridge. Instead of going above, they went below, and soon found the river. They followed the Snake, winding and turning. Sometimes they saw bodies face-down in the river. "You don't need to see that," Joel said to Ellie, who was watching.

"I've seen worse," she said quietly, and then looked away.

"Give me a hand up here," Tommy said. They had reached rock where it was flat and hard and tall. Joel boosted Tommy with his hand. Joel saw him look around before he lent back down, reaching for Joel and lifting him up. It only took Joel to pull Ellie up, who was small and light. She found a nook in the rock with her foot, and climbed the rest of the day. She was a talented climber. On the way back to Jackson from Salt Lake City, Joel had woken in the night a few times to find Ellie missing. He'd searched for her the first time worried sick and then find her in a tree. They'd talk for a little while, and then she'd say she was tired and go to sleep. Joel wouldn't sleep again on those nights. Even when he knew she was nearby, he wouldn't be calm unless they were together.  _Cautious or dead._

By the sun, Joel reckoned an hour had passed when they entered familiar territory. They reached the right hand side of the river by the dam, where a set of stairs led to a small, barricaded control room.

"This was open when we got here," Tommy said. "Skeleton in there, though. The people were spooked by something Ora said, so they wanted it blocked off. Maria told me just to do it, so I did."

"How will we know if there's hunters in there, Tommy?"  _Stay focused, little brother._

"Oh. We won't, I guess." There was a silence as they crossed the small bridge, wide enough only for two people, and then, "Actually, there's a door." Tommy reached into his pocket and, sure enough, drew the huge tangle of iron and steel keys. Some of them were rusted, Joel noticed this close, and probably didn't work. Luckily, the key he found was small and fairly clean. Instead of going left and heading up the winding path to the front gates, Tommy went ahead. He felt at a wall of moss and vines until he felt something, and then pulled the vines away.

A tangle of vines broke off instantly with a snap, though he struggled with some of the thicker pieces. Joel went to make forward when Ellie scarpered on ahead, reaching into her backpack. She took out a pair of scissors and sawed away at some of the vines. Tommy murmured some thanks and continued, until eventually Joel saw the door. It was old and rusted.  _How long has that been covered up?_

"I knew it was here somewhere," Tommy said. I've had the keys for a long time, and we tried to open it from the inside but couldn't. Thought there'd be something like this on the other side. Too right I was," he laughed a little. He forced the key into the lock, it bumping against the old tumbler pins as it slid in, and then stopped. "Wrong damn key," he said, and tried a few others.

Ellie lent on the fence to the side of them, overlooking the first of two waterfalls the dam had constructed. "How long did it take them to make these things?"

"Dams?" Joel asked. "They took a while. Years."

"What about buildings?"

"How long's a piece of string?"

"Depends on the string?"

"Depends on the building."

"A big one. Like the ones we saw in Utah, or when we left Boston."

"Couple of years, probably. I'm not a builder though, don't quote me on that."

"What  _did_  you do?"

"Got it!" Tommy said, the key full in the lock. Joel drew his 9mm as Tommy slowly pushed open the door. The roar of the rushing water made it difficult to hear anything, but Joel couldn't see anybody down the dark corridor. "Go," Tommy said quietly. "In."

Joel went in first, pistol aimed at the end of the corridor, watching. His eyes slowly adjusted to the dark, and he could make out the walls. Joel could smell the moss and the damp of the bowels of the facility. No shapes moved in the darkness, so he lowered his gun. He saw an arrow dip from a bow and Ellie lowered it, placing the arrow back in a quiver.

Tommy came in last, closing the door slowly, and then pulling it hard. There was a deep thrum as the door shot, and a clang in metal. "Shit," he said. "The lock. It's stuck." He tried to open the door again.

"Where's the key?"

"It's in my pock – shit."

"Please tell me you didn't leave it in the door."

"I left it in the door."

"God damn it, Tommy," he said. "Okay, come on. Let's get your damn photos and get the hell out of here."

"Fucking stinks in here, Tommy. What was this, a corridor for pissing?" Ellie asked.

"It's just old water that's become stagnant, kid," he said. "Let me go ahead."

Tommy walked ahead without a gun. He walked with the stride of someone who knew the corridors, but he didn't know the corridors. It had only been a few days, but leaving things for any amount of time meant you relinquished ownership. To keep it, you had to defend it with everything you had. Long ago, when Joel and Tess had set out to collect  _their own guns_  that had been taken from them, they had to pay for them with a smuggling journey. Joel had moved from living in the past to the present more recently. Ellie made the trip from the past to the present worth it, despite the struggles.

They continued to walk, quiet and not speaking. Joel kept his gun up, but Ellie didn't have an arrow in her bow, though she held it at her side. Tommy guided them down the corridors back to the main engineering section, where Joel had been when the dam had been attacked by hunters months ago. It held the huge fans that converted the water's currents into electricity and held them. "We had to change the supply," Tommy explained as they walked, nervous and talking to conceal it, though it only served to highlight it. "There's a lot of gas in there now. It's not being used, but it's a pressure thing. I don't really understand it, but we were warned to be careful. I was damn terrified when people started bloody firin' in the room. Could've killed us all."

It was further down the corridor when they discovered they had reached a dead-end. Tommy knew the maze as well as anybody, but it was deeper than he had gone, and he always had a scout team with him. In truth, Joel had never thought Tommy knew the system as well as he had claimed. It was then that they heard the footsteps, and the voices.

"… the old man says people were here recently."o

"He ain't the leader he used to be.  _Somebody_ 's gotta step up. He's damn near senile."

"I dunno. I think I believe 'im. He's not been wrong before."

"He's got too much damn mercy for this world. We gotta fight or we die. He wants us all to be friends. I tell ya, I'd like to see him negotiate with a clicker." They both laughed a little. "This way?" the shadow pointed towards the trio, hoping to be concealed in the darkness.

"Nah man, it's th – wait, what is that? Who's down there?"

Joel raised his gun as he saw Ellie reach for an arrow. His 9mm was silenced, but it still made a noise. He missed, and Ellie's arrow took the other in the throat, gargling. The other hunter screamed.

"Holy fucking shit. We got  _intruders_ , here, they fucking killed Rockerfellar," he said, whining, he stood behind the wall in cover. A voice crackled back on a radio, indiscernible words. The hunter's arm came around the corner, a pistol aimed in the vague direction of the trio. He missed every time, firing into the darkness, his hand visibly shaking from shock. Ellie ran forward as his gun snapped back, out of ammunition. She lifted her bow and struck him hard over the head with it, and then kicked him. He fell onto the floor and reached for his friend's gun. Joel caught up, and put a bullet in his head. He slid out the ammunition from the dead hunter's gun and put it into his pocket.

"Get us out of here, Tommy," Joel said. Tommy bit his lip and looked at the three possible routes, and then started forward.

"There's a room, I think, down here – where… LOOK OUT!"

Ellie moved out of the way of the man with the shotgun, and Joel fired a bullet from his 9mm into his head. He swapped to his rifle. They left his body and weapon, Joel had no room for another, Tommy could barely handle his rifle and Ellie was content with his bow. The complex was alive with the sound of guns being cocked and the shouts of people. Joel could make out their screams and how far they were behind them as they found the bodies they left in their wake. After what seemed like forever, there was a metal door.

The door had a giant metal wheel in the centre, like the hatch of a submarine. Joel turned it hard. "Hurry," Ellie said. "Hurry!" Joel heard the  _thrum_ of an arrow and the thud of a body sink to the floor. They turned the wheel hard. Tommy grabbed it too and they both turned it, slowing rotating. Then at once it loosened, and they all dove into the small room, Ellie too.

They slammed the hatch and heard the sound of guns against it, wheeling the latch closed. Dents appeared in the doors. It would not hold. They looked around the room they were in – a small control room, a skeleton under the desk. Joel recognised where they were, but there was nothing they could do to escape. Tommy and the others had firmly sealed it from both the inside and the out. They were trapped. They stuck the legs of a chair into the wheel and watched as it moved from side to side.

"It won't hold 'em for long," Joel said. "The legs'll snap eventually."

There was a voice from the outside, deep, menacing and angry. "You have until the count of three to get out, or I will break the door open, and I will riddle your fucking bodies with bullets without hearing you out."

"How about you take your bullets and you  _go fuck yourself_!" Ellie shouted.

"You've got a dirty mouth, little girl," he said. "I'll stick the barrel of it first and fucking blow you to pieces."

"Not if –"

"You got ten seconds. Ten. Nine. Eight…"

"Joel, we gotta do something," Tommy whined.

"Seven. Six. Five. Four…

"Let me think, let me think…"

Joel looked around the room, but it was empty. There was nothing in his back that would help; they couldn't hope to shoot their way out, there were too many of them all right outside the door. The windows were barricaded, they'd be shot down.

"Three. Two. One."

The wheel began to turn back and forth, rumbling. The chair's old legs squeaked with the strain. Tommy grabbed the chair, trying to keep it stable, but the metal twisted and snapped. The wheel began to turn properly. Joel, Tommy and Ellie grabbed the wheel, and tried to keep it. But there were too many of them, much bigger. Joel thought only of Ellie's safety, making her go behind him as they tried to keep them from opening the door.  _You won't hurt my little girl,_ he thought,  _you won't hurt my little girl._

They would take him from her, and they would kill her.

The door, inch by inch, pushed open.


	4. Chapter 4

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** It's been a little while. Sorry it took so long for this update, but it took a little while to write. I initially wrote the entire chapter as a Joel chapter, but then decided it didn't fit. You'll be sick of Joel by now, so here's the next chapter from Ellie's perspective. I generally use Joel when I'm trying to capture a particularly dark side of something, whereas Ellie tends to reflect on the light. There's a recurring motif of moonlight used in this chapter that I think sort of shows that Ellie is always looking for the light, whereas in Joel's chapters the light tends to bother him, in the last making him stuffy and uncomfortable. So yeah, this is a very paced chapter. A  _lot lot lot_ happens. If you paid very close attention to the game, then there's something in there for you. If not, it's just another character, and I tried to develop him like I would with any others. Thanks for all of your support this far, it's great to get so many positive reviews, and to hear from you all. Make sure to tell me what you're enjoying here.

* * *

**ELLIE II**

* * *

"Stop," said a voice, calmer than the others. The noise levels fell and the door became limp. If Joel and Ellie were to slam it hard enough, it would lock again. Joel lessened his grip on the door, and Ellie did too. Sometimes she knew she emulated Joel, but mostly Ellie was unaware. The resemblances were common, however; she even dressed the way he did these days. "Let me through," it commanded. It was a smaller voice, but it had some authority, and the men outside seemed to listen. Ellie snapped one of her arrow in half, sticking the half with the arrowhead down her jeans. It was uncomfortable, but necessary in case one of them tried to beat her. She pulled down her shirt over it.

"What's going on?" Tommy asked, voice lowered.

Joel said nothing, listening. He switched his rifle out for his 9mm; Ellie readied an arrow.

"Hello in there," said the voice. "I'm gonna come in. I'd prefer it if you didn't shoot me, thank ya." Without any other words, the door opened a little more and Joel let go. He backed off, pointing his gun at the old man who entered.

"What do you want?" Joel asked. Ellie looked back to the old man. He  _was_  old; at least fifty. Ellie hadn't seen many old people, so when they did come around she knew their age pretty well. He would have no hair on his head at all if not for the tufts of white that sprouted around lower sides of his head. His skin had blotches of brown and yellow on tanned white skin.

"I don't think you should be in any rush to leave this room. My friends outside do not like you very much," he said. Ellie saw shadows on the door frame, heads craning to see in. The old man placed his hand on the hatch, and pushed it hard. The shadows bounced away, and the door shut. "It's probably best we speak quietly."

The old man considered each of the party individually. He looked longest at Joel, and then Ellie, and only gave a passing glance to Tommy. "It seems to me," the man said, "that you guys know your way around here. Or at least one of you does." Nobody looked at each other, though the old man's head moved, looking at each one of them. "Come on. Speak up."

"This place was mine," Tommy pitched in. His voice was strong. Ellie wondered if this was the voice he used when he was commanding the settlers. She thought he'd lost the ability to stay strong when Maria did. Still, his tone was shaky.  _Joel should have spoken up._ "I ran this place, providing electricity to my settlement."

It seemed Tommy no longer cared about the settlers enough to safeguard their existence.  _I'd be pretty pissed too._  In fact, Ellie  _had_  been pissed.

"Is that so?" said the old man. When he spoke, his white eyebrows seemed to draw a line across his brow, which matted into red and white rolls of skin. He wore a blue denim jacket and jeans, and his chest puffed out in such a way that Ellie thought there was probably a fair amount of fat hidden beneath whatever bulletproof clothing he was wearing. "The little town on the Snake?"

"Yeah. We left them."

"You say that as though you don't like them, boy. I'm led to believe you did not leave, so much as you were forced to. Something bad happen? Ah well," he said, nothing giving time for anybody to answer. He didn't want an answer, Ellie reckoned. She wanted to speak, but Joel was giving her a look that said she should not. "It's nice to meet you folks. You've got a little girl you haven't eaten, so that bodes well for your morals. Sadly you killed a lot of my men. That complicates things."

"Who are you?" asked Joel, finally speaking. His gun was readied, though lowered. There was something tense in Joel's face that Ellie knew from experience was worry. She was worried too.

"The name's Ish." Ellie wasn't watching this  _Ish,_ she was watching Joel, and his jaw locked and his eyebrows were lifted. He seemed to know this man. "I lead the merry bunch you guys have already come into contact with. Ish and the Merry Men. Almost a folk group."

"Well, Ish," Ellie finally said, realising that Joel's reaction to this man's name –  _maybe he knew someone called Ish_ – was not important. "How about you go FUCK YOURSELF, and let us go?"

"Ellie," Joel started, but Ish rounded on Ellie. Joel's gun came up but the old man paid it no mind.

"Well, little lady – Ellie? – I can't do that now, can I? My men would be angry. Most likely I'd get a bullet in the head for doing that. They don't like me much already.  _Too old_ , they whisper. They're right, course," he said, laughing a little. "I could be your grandfather," he said to Ellie. "Your father," he said to Tommy and Joel. It occurred to Ellie that she didn't know anything about Joel's parents, and he didn't know much about hers. She'd tell him one day. "We gotta approach this with some tact," continued Ish. "I'm gonna take you to my office."

"No, this is a bad idea – we should –" Tommy started. He must've had the same thought Ellie did.  _Take the old man hostage._ But if 'Ish' was telling the truth, and his men didn't value him, then they'd riddle him with bullets as quickly as they would Joel, Tommy and Ellie.  _Old man isn't stupid._

"No," said Joel. "I trust him."

 _What are you doing, Joel?_ Ellie wondered, but she trusted him to do the right thing for her. Always.

"My men will escort you, and you won't like that. I don't either, but they're still my men. They'll take you to the little room I call my office. It's cosy. You'll like it."

"Cosy?" Ellie asked.

"Comfortable," Joel offered. "Sheath your bow."

"We're keeping our weapons," Tommy said.

"That is a  _no-no_ ," Ish said. "I got out there with  _they're keeping their weapons_  and they immediately know my intent is not to kill you. No, you gotta give them to me."

There was an uneasy hesitation in the room, but it was Joel that relented first. Wordlessly, he handed over his weapons, and Tommy did the same. The old man looked then at Ellie. "Come on, little girl," he said. "Do what your dads tell you."

"Fuck you," she said as she handed over her bow.

"The arrows too."

She unstrapped the quiver and gave it to him.

"Lead the way," said Joel.

When Ish opened the door, with some struggle, though nobody offered him aid, the men swarmed like vultures. Their guns were at the ready, ready to kill. Tommy hung back, hesitant and worried, but Joel had some strange faith in him.  _Here's hoping it doesn't get us fucking killed_ , she thought. The old men held up their weapons. "It seems they may know more about the settlement," he explained to them. "I am takin' them in for questioning."

Ellie always noticed the voice of men in power. It commanded, it demanded, but there was something about Ish's that didn't. He wasn't really asking, but he almost wasn't telling. She wondered if it left him open to criticism and questioning.  _These fucking animals would jump at the chance._

There were some grunts around the room, but it was a man who was sitting propped up against the wall who spoke clearly, and to Ish. "You're gonna  _question_ them? They killed six of our  _friends_ ," he said. "Was their loss for nothing, just so you could find some new people to talk to?"

"In my arms, Travis, there are guns and arrows. If you do not wish an arrow slid between your ribs or a bullet lodged in your skull, I suggest that you hold your tongue.  _I too_  have lost six men today. I take it that you do not wish to become the seventh. Shut your mouth."

The man stood, dull light spilling over his body. He was tall, taller than Joel, with skin black as coal. He had no hair, and a small green beret on his head. He wore some form of military uniform, maybe from before everything, Ellie didn't recognise it. "Are you threatening me, old man?"

"I am not making a threat. I am making a  _promise_. They come  _with me_. Derek, Lawson, take them to my room. I'll see to them soon."

A man and woman in the crowd gave sharp nods and came forward, rifles pointed at them. In a single file queue they were directed out of the concrete maze. Along the way, there was blood smudged along the walls and on the floor, remnants from what they'd left in their ambitious entrance. When they emerged into fresh air, Ellie recognised where they were. They were headed, she thought, to the small room Tommy had used before. She slowed her pace a little then and walked beside Joel. Tommy was at the back of the pillar, the barrel of a gun at his spine.

"What the fuck is going on Joel?" she asked him quietly, but she was overheard.

"No talking," said the woman. Her assault rifle was directed in the general direction of Ellie and Joel, who walked in front of Tommy. It would take the hunters less than a full clip of bullets to bring them to the floor, if something were to happen. And regardless of Joel or Ellie's safety, Tommy would be fucked.

"Trust me," Joel whispered.  _I do._

"I said no fucking talking."

The office had not changed. There was little in way of decoration, though Ellie noticed the photo of Maria was missing. She glanced in Tommy's direction and it seemed he too had noticed. The two hunters did not enter the room with them, they stood guard outside. The office only had one window; it was barred from the outside.

"Why is every fucking action you took working against us?" Ellie said, pushing herself up onto the metal desk that sat in the corner of the room, underneath the window. She peered outside; dead grass and the distant roar of the river. "What's this guy's deal?"

"Just do what he says," Joel said quickly. "When we were in the sewers –"

The door swung open with no indication and Ish entered, cutting Joel off. "Please," he apologised, "don't stop on account of me. I don't mean to get in the way of your conversation." It seemed to Ellie that he was being sincere, but his words sounded so exaggerated – so insincere.

"What do you mean to do with us?" Tommy asked.

Ish didn't say anything. He sat their weapons in the corner of the room, right beside Ellie, almost as if saying  _go on, take them_ , and then sat in the wheeled office chair behind another metal desk. He opened the drawer and took out an old unframed photograph of Maria and Tommy. "I thought I recognised you, boy," Ish said, pointing at him. "Seems you were telling the truth. This was your place." He handed the picture over to Tommy who took it without a word. "I gotta keep it for now – I'm sorry. Gotta prove to my boys that you did have the place. Once. How many of there were you?"

"A hundred, a hundred and fifty. Enough."

"A small army these days. How organised were you? Efficient?"

"Very."

"Right 'till the end. The more efficient the group, the better the morals."

"That's bullshit," Ellie said.

"Oh? How so?"

"I met an organised group half a year back. They locked me up in a cage. They were gonna eat me. Cannibals."

"And I bet they were losing their minds in the end," Ish continued. He lifted another photograph out of the drawer. Ellie squinted to see it, but it was blocked by the drawer; he didn't lift it out high enough. Still, he seemed to dwell on it. "When something bad comes, something like winter, like you said, they blame the one on top. They become wild. This leader you speak of, I bet he only encouraged their… primal side. Cannibalism," he said, as though the word tasted foul. "And in the end, the wild ones want rid of the one on top. Like lions they seek the fittest. An old lion's no use… look at me. My authority is shaky at best these days. One of my brothers will get me one day. Slit my throat in my sleep, maybe. It's my job to stop that from happening, yet here we stand. There's no honour anymore, my friends. This is a predatory world, and it's slowing eating itself alive."

The old bastard was right. Ellie had heard them whisper about calling a council to overthrow David.  _Maybe he isn't such a dumbfuck after all._

"We just want to survive," Tommy said. Joel was behind him, leaning against the window beside the door. It was a high window, Ellie noted, thinking that she doubted anybody could be looking in to read their lips. Maria and her had held their own against a hunter attack in this very room before, and that window had been no fucking use.

"So did these cannibals. So do my boys."

"Cut to the fucking chase,  _Ish_. What do you want?"

"Want? Child, I don't want much. I certainly don't condone the killing of children, if that's what you're asking. No, children are… children are our future." The man's old eyes lingered elsewhere on nothing. Ellie knew the look; it was a look she had seen on Joel, on Tommy, on Marlene, on anybody who had ever lost somebody on this world.

She had seen that look on everybody she had ever known.

"None of you will die here while I keep going, I promise you that." He placed the photo carefully back at the bottom of the drawer and held his hand out for Tommy's. He hesitated at first and then placed it back in Ish's hand, which carefully stowed it away into the drawer. "All my life people have been coming and going. Mostly going, but here I am. I keep on paddlin'. You know the feeling?" he looked to Tommy, who nodded slowly, to Ellie, who looked away, and then to Joel, who held the old man's gaze.

"That your girl?" he asked Tommy, nudging at the drawer with his eyes. Tommy nodded again, and that was enough for Ish. "I'm sorry for your loss, son. I know what it's like to lose someone you love. I do. Susan, her name was. Strong, sure-footed. You'll find that women often rise higher than men in this new world. Funny. The president of damn FEDRA is a woman, did you know that?" A pause. "Course you didn't. Nobody cares about the president of Nowhereville, s'long as they don't take a giant crap on your lawn."

Ellie couldn't hold out the giggle that found its way out, though she did try. Joel smiled in the corner, probably at Ellie trying to stop herself laughing. She screwed her face up in Joel's direction and he smiled again.

"Well folks, it's getting late. Old bones tire quick. I'll give you some time to rest yourselves up, then I'll send you on your way. Secretly, course. We can't have my boys finding out I let you go. You killed my men but you did what you had to. You're carrying something precious," he said, and looked to Ellie. She should have felt crept out, she knew, but she didn't – she felt proud. Joel smiled in the corner again, she noticed. He nodded a little. "Can I ask your names?"

"Trey," replied Joel, almost too quickly.

"Tess," said Ellie.

"John."

Ish nodded slowly. "Of course you are," he says.  _He doesn't believe us. He's quick._ "Nice to meet you three – Trey, Tess and John. I'll show you to your room. Don't expect a five star hotel now."

* * *

Ellie didn't sleep. Joel and Tommy did – they had been awake far longer than she had. Her mind was aglow with frantic activity, a hive of questions. Joel had explained his trust in this man, and he joked that it seemed she would never stop asking questions, but the story had stuck with her on a few levels.  _Kids._  She thought of Sam, and Henry.

Joel had explained that whilst exploring the sewer systems he had found notes belonging to some man who signed himself Ish. In those notes he detailed that he had been washed up on a boat and found his way into the sewer systems, where he set up a small base of operations. He came across another small band of survivors – a woman named Susan and her children. They traded for some time and then eventually he offered them refuge with him; they accepted. They built a home together in the sewers, safe from invaders. Joel reckoned they survived for a long time in there. The kids growing. She remembered the sewers well; there had been a nursery, drawings by children, a room that had served as a school. They had built up a life there. Then someone left a door open.

The infected had attacks in hordes; probably waiting for their chance for months. Susan and Ish were separated from the others, Ish thought. A note from another guy – Kyle – seemed to suggest they were split apart, Kyle with the children and Ish with Susan. The infected were near to knocking down the door. Joel reckoned Kyle spared the kids the horror of being eaten alive by shooting them in the head, and then turned the gun on himself. Susan hadn't made it, it seemed, though Joel didn't know how. Ish had escaped, and now here he was. That was why Joel had trusted him – he had a child with him. Ish would not be responsible for the death of another child. Joel had placed a lot of faith in this idea, but it seemed to have paid off. Joel was a good judge of character.

The story had filled Ellie with a dark sadness. Not anger, just sadness. It made her think of the people she had lost. It made her miss them. Moonlight split the trees asunder from outside, and the shadows of leaves danced on the walls, making shapes like ghosts of the past. Ellie closed her eyes.

But she didn't want to close her eyes – she wanted out of the room. She wanted to ask Ish about Susan, about Kyle, about the children. She wanted to see the picture he kept; she wanted her arrows. Ellie wanted a lot of things.

Tommy and Joel slept on the floor of the room, they had given her the one bed, but it really hadn't been much better than the floor. The dam was never built for comfort, it was remade under Maria and Tommy's command to become a fort. That fort was now their prison.

Outside, she heard a clamour rising in the distance. Light stirred outside, red and orange mingled with the white moonlight and the black shadows. Ellie stood up on her bed; the window was a thin strip barely two feet long at the top of the wall, so it took her some effort to get a look. She could see shapes under the flames in their hands, and guns.  _Fuck. They're coming for us._

"Joel," she nudged him. " _Joel_!"

He snapped awake. "What's wrong?"

"Outside," she said. "They're fucking coming for us. I know they are."

He stood on the bed and peered out too. "God damn it. Tommy," he said, and gave him a light kick. Tommy stirred, rubbing his eyes sleepily.

"I've had a long day, Joel," Tommy said.

"No fucking around, Tommy. We gotta go."

The door was locked, but it was an old door. Joel couldn't pick locks, but Tommy could. "Maria taught me," he explained. "There were so many damn rooms in this place that we couldn't find  _all_ the keys. I had the key for this door, but it's in my backpack, in Ish's." He asked for two of Ellie's hair pins, which she kept in her pocket. He used that and a very small, thin piece of metal to rake around inside the lock. It seemed to take forever; he wasn't the best at it. Maria had been the deft hand. He raked around and around, until the pins clicked into place above and the door unlocked. Quietly, Tommy pushed it open. Joel left the room first, then Ellie. They corridor was all silent steel, quiet stone and bouncing moonlight. They walked down the corridor, Tommy guiding them. He knew these levels, and Joel seemed to remember most of them anyway.

They came across Ish's office, but two guards stood outside of it. They faced away from the trio, down the corridor, the door just on their right. Tommy and Joel exchanged a look together and then nodded. They crept up behind them and grabbed them by their throats, pulling them back and strangling them. They struggled for a while until their legs stopped resisting and they fell. Ellie didn't know if they were dead or simply unconscious. She helped Tommy and Joel move their bodies into a room just off the corridor.

They lifted their guns. "A bit light," said Joel and slid out the clip. "Empty." Tommy did the same and nodded. "Seems Ish was telling the truth about his men really badly needing supplies. Guess the guns are just fear tactics."

She followed Joel very closely behind him as he rounded on Ish's office, back to the wall, listening carefully.

There were raised voices inside the room, and Ellie had to focus very acutely to make out what they were saying.

"… 'the fuck are they?"

"They're just travellers, Travis. Put that damn gun down before you hurt yourself."

"Bullshit, old man. You were fond of them," the man said. Ellie recognised the voice – the voice that had questioned Ish before, challenged him. There was something stronger about his voice now. Ellie crouched down and pushed her head past Joel's legs, looking into the room. Ish was sat on his chair, the man – Travis – stood with a 9mm pointed at his head.

"Look," Ish said, reaching for his drawer. The man's gun hand flinched and he pushed it towards Ish a little, Ish recoiling back. "I'm going to get proof, god damn it, Travis. There's no need for the gun."

"Open it. Slowly."

Ish obliged, pulling it open what seemed like fully. He retrieved a photo, the one of Maria and Tommy. "They held this place before we took it. They offered some information on the settlement. They told me – I let 'em spend the night, they'll help us take the settlement. A fair deal. They got a kid with 'em, Trav." Ish seemed to pull the photograph back towards himself a little, though Travis hadn't finished with it, clearly. He inclined his neck up a little, stretching it towards Ish.

Ish didn't miss a beat, he stretched the photograph tight and slid it across Travis' throat, but not quickly enough. Shots rang out and Ish fell back to his chair, his shoulder glimmering with blood and a burn from so close a wound

"Fuck you, old man." He put a bullet in his head. Ellie jumped a little, fright from the noise mostly. But in retreating back behind Joel's legs, out of sight, she knew he'd seen her.

"Get the fuck in here," she heard. "Get in here."

"Stay here," Joel whispered. He entered the room.

"You. How the fuck did you get out? Did the old man give you a motherfucking key?"

"No," Joel explained. "I picked the lock. Listen –"

"No, you can listen. You killed my fucking friends. You and your little bitch, and the former owner of this proud establishment. Ish said you can get us into that damn settlement. Jackson. That true? Tell the truth now, or you can crumple up, a corpse beside your friend."

"Yes. It's true."

"How?"

"We have a key. Actually, we have a lot of keys."

"How many settlers are there?"

"Maybe a dozen now, but it's got supplies for a hundred and fifty."

"Where's this key?"

"Over there, in the backpack."

There was some hesitation. He wouldn't get it himself, but he couldn't trust Joel to go over. Ellie worried for Joel then, she considered running in, but he'd put bullets in both of them. Tommy worried at her side. He put his finger to his lips.  _Shhh yourself, useless fuck._

"Get it."

Ellie listened carefully. She heard them, their feet moving slowly. They seemed to round each other, until eventually she heard one of the zips, very slowly, open in the backpack. Something clattered to the floor.

"Keep your hands back from those arrows."

 _Arrows._ She remembered. She lifted her sweater… and then she ran. Before Tommy could say a word, she ran into the room. "Fucking son of a bitch," she screamed as she thrust the broken half of the arrow through Travis' throat. Blood spurted loosely and she kicked the gun from his loosening hand. He collapsed, face-first, onto the cold stone floor.

She looked up at Joel, who was facing her. His eyes lingered on her for a few moments. "It was either him or me," he consoled. She nodded. He lifted the weapons from the corner of the room, and Tommy came in.

"Fucking hell, Ellie," Tommy said. "Nicely done."

Joel threw the rifle to him, and he caught it. He handed Ellie a 9mm. "My bow –"

" – is a lot of help when they don't know we're here, but they'll find us. You need a gun or this won't end well. A bow won't help in a firefight."

She nodded, understanding.  _Listen to him._ She was shaking a little, adrenaline in her blood.  _Pull yourself together, Ellie._

They took their backpacks back and replenished their ammo clips. Joel and Tommy's eyes lingered on Ish's body for a moment, his old face frozen in a perpetual sadness. Joel reached over to his bloody face and closed his eyelids. Tommy looked at the bloodied photography that lay face-up on the ground. Ellie wondered what thoughts were going through his mind, but he turned away from it and walked off towards the door. Joel followed. Ellie reached for the drawer, wanting desperately to know what Ish sought solace in, sought peace in, but she couldn't.  _This is Ish's._ She didn't want to violate his memories, his physical memories. She wouldn't want anybody to look through her things – not that she really had any.

"Let's go, Ellie," Joel said.

"Yeah," she said, finally tiring. She wanted to sleep. She wondered if Ish's last thought was of Susan, or of Kyle, or of himself.

They headed off down the corridors that seemed to go on forever. Tommy said they had to leave via the engine rooms, with the fans. Ellie didn't want to go that way, but she hadn't voiced her annoyance. Joel had been almost entombed there last time, and Tommy had said that the gas was still very active and that not being detected was crucial. Ellie wondered if her bow was a maybe a good idea.

The moon illuminated every patch of ground, so they had to rely on cover to get past guards. They injured as little people as possible on the way out, only taking out two more guards in the same way as before. Ellie didn't dwell on it – she never did. It was eat or be eaten.  _This is a predatory world_ , Ish had said,  _and it's slowly eating itself alive._

The whir of the fans was audible from the outside. They seemed to moan as they turned, creaking with age. Tommy had made them live again, but still they struggled to. The three of them, crouched, made their way down a flight of stairs, moving past the fans and trying to get to the back. This, Tommy said, would take them out, and then he had the key to get them out of the dam and run right down the Snake, taking them to the railway tracks that would help them find wherever they were headed next. Ellie had contemplated asking Joel if they could go back to Boston, but she figured he wouldn't want to, so she hadn't bothered. She only wanted to go somewhere Joel was happy to go.

"They're in here somewhere," they heard. "Sweep the area. Shoot on sight."

They stopped dead in their tracks, crouched between boxes and a railing. The moon's slight was barely a sliver in here, only let in through cracks, and Ellie was grateful.  _They shouldn't see us in this low light_ – and then she saw the torches. They pierced the darkness, cracking it apart with cones of light that moved as they walked forward.

"There's too many of them, we gotta run for the exit," Joel whispered.

"That's suicide, Joel," Tommy said.

"It's against certain death, they're gonna meet us in the damn middle!"

Tommy struggled with the option for a moment, and then agreed. "On three."

"One, two, three! –"

"THERE THEY ARE!"

Shoots rang out, the cones of light shuddering as the guns they were attached to twitched with fire.  _These guns aren't just for show._  Ellie felt air whisper at the small of her back as a bullet rushed past it, barely missing her, sparks off the railing.

They jumped over boxes, rounding the giant fans towards the door. They were so close, and then the door flew open. They ducked just in time, shouts and bullets ringing out, sparks flying apart. At first Ellie hoped that the two teams would shoot each other up without meaning to, but what happened was far worse.

A plume of flame erupted and Ellie felt the heat on her face as the gas ignited from the generators; eruptions of spewing fire and smoke blowing apart the metal foundation of the place. One slammed down onto the guards and the door they had headed for, blocking it off. Screams and billowing flame mingled into one wrenching sound, high in the darkness. The moon's light burst through the ceiling as it fell apart.

"MOVE!" Ellie heard, and a hand grabbed her, tugging. Loose bricks fell to where she had stood, and Joel stood holding her. "Come on, Ellie, Ellie… Tommy… Tommy!"

They began to run, skirting through explosions and bullets. They continued to fire at them – their lives were slowly being snuffed out by hard flying concrete and metal, but they continued to fire. Their lives were truly aimless.  _This is a predatory world…_

There was a gap in the wall caused by the explosions, though it was the wrong side. The hole took them out into the night, and down a hill. There was a fence, barbed at the top, but they climbed it anyway, their hands bleeding when each of them were at the other side. Explosions sang out from behind them, and screams too. Confusion, rage.

Ellie and Joel and Tommy continued down the hill. The trees began to grow thick around them, but they kept running. Then, at once, Joel stopped and crouched low, and told the others to say the same. He put his finger to his lips and shook his head. The explosions in the night, the music of life, had drawn them in, and the night was alive with the sound of clicking.

* * *

 **AFTER NOTE:** Thanks for sticking with me through that hulk. Five and a half thousand words of plot. Hard to write. I've got a headache as I type this. So yeah, who do you prefer - Ellie's chapters, or Joel's? I find Joel's easier to write, but there's something fun about swearing a lot that makes me like Ellie's too. Hoping you're enjoying the story so far. For the first time, there's going to be some damn infected. I want to maintain the kind of tense atmosphere the game created when you were fighting infected. The darkness, which was sort of why the forest became a setting. Anyway, let me know what you're enjoying. Follow, favourite, read and review! It's really incredibly rewarding when you guys actively subscribe and become parts of this new story.


	5. JOEL III

**Author's Note:** And here I am with the most recent offering for you. This chapter was pretty difficult to write, and I think that'll probably show. I don't want to speak too much here, because spoilers. There are things going on in this world; something bad is happening.  _The Last of Us_  largely refrained from the idea of good and bad, but I think there's something much deeper to be explored about that. The idea that someone could be considered evil, which is something I'll return to again and again. To me, at least, you have to really push  _evil_ and not give it a viewpoint in order to misconstrue it. David was a good example, but even then you could see where he was coming from. As always,  _light_ is a recurring motif that sets up how Joel sees the world again. Hope you like reading it :3 Read and review and favourite and follow!

* * *

**JOEL III**

* * *

That rhythmic clicking seemed to echo through the entire forest floor. These clickers were something different, something new. Joel could see them out the window, staggering step by step, listening to kill. The moonlight did not pierce the thicket of leaves that blanketed the forest, but even still Joel could make out the faint orange glow of their twisted, grotesque heads; the two sides that had split asunder twitched like feelers. He seldom took the time to watch them, but they were safe in the cabin as long as they kept quiet.

The night was young and it seemed there was little chance of it giving way to day any time soon. Joel looked over at Ellie and Tommy; they were sitting on two chairs with a small, circular desk between them – on it was an oversized map of Jackson County. They spoke only when they had to, and communicated through gestures. Ellie's were… vivid representations of possible futures. They made Joel smile.  _Sometimes I forget she's just a kid._  Ellie had been through things that people Joel's own age couldn't endure. Joel never forgot how strong she was. Even now she was Joel's light.

The rattling clicks from outside made Joel look back outside again, and he saw them – they began to sprint away, screams mingled with clicks, legs thrashing against the dry hard ground.

"Psst," Joel heard, and turned around. Ellie pointed at the window and then waved her hands around wildly. Joel peered out the window again, still seeing clickers and runners alike screaming high, cold screams and running for something unseeable in the distance, in the dark. Tommy rose to his feet behind Joel, he could see him in the window, and checked the other windows.

"Yeah," Joel said. "They're done."

"Fucking," Ellie said. "I thought we were gonna have to take a vow of fucking silence."

"One day," Joel said, "I'm gonna sit you down and tell you that swearing is real bad habit and you should try to stop," Ellie stared at him. "Another day." She laughed.

Tommy walked back over to the map, he hovered over Ellie and looked to Joel. "Come over here," he said. Joel made his way over and sat where Tommy had been. "These towns here –" he pointed, "are failed settlements. Infected got in, hunters got in, either way they're overrun with something. These towns here are untouched, last I heard."

"Can we go back to Boston?" Ellie asked.

 _She does want to go back._ "I was gonna ask you the same thing."

"Could we get back in?"

"Me and Tess used to make trips in and out of the zone every other week. That was what we did. We can get back in the city."

"I hate to burst this happy family bubble, but Boston is two and a half thousand miles away. Have you got an aeroplane you're not tellin' me about?"

"We made it here before," Ellie said. "We got a car. We could, uh, get another one? They're fucking everywhere."

"Cars are plentiful, workin' cars ain't easy to come by. Their batteries…" Tommy began, scratching his forehead uneasily.

"Yeah, we know how a car works," Ellie said, "but they can be fixed. We managed that before too. Joel?"

Joel thought about it for a moment, resting back in his seat. "We're gonna need supplies. A lot of 'em. When Ellie and me came down the I-80 we had to loot cars, barely anything to live on. There won't be enough on a highway for three of us."

"So we go into one of the nearby towns and we get supplies that'll last us," she said, looking from Tommy to Joel rapidly. It reminded Joel of the way Sarah use to plead for things – the way she'd become excitable when what she wanted crept closer. In a lot of ways, Ellie reminded Joel of Sarah – they'd have been good friends, though Sarah would be nearing twice Ellie's age.

Joel looked to Tommy, who still looked uneasy. "I like Boston, I do. It's safe and secure but it's  _too far away_. Wyoming is the least populated state in the United States. Boston itself had as many people in it as this entire state does." Joel could see where this was going, and he could see that Ellie looked upset.  _She wants to go back to Boston. Maybe she hopes Marlene will be there._  "We should head into Cheyenne. The city."

"The city'll be overrun with fucking infected!" Ellie said, rising.

"If you two could carve your way through the centre of Boston and then from the east coast to the west of the damn country, Cheyenne won't be a problem for us."

"We didn't carve a way through, Tommy," Joel said. "We lost people. We survived because of  _luck_ , and –"

" – it'll run out," Ellie finished.

"Then why risk goin' back to Boston!" he said, too loudly. The room seemed to stand still for a moment; Joel stood and peered out the window again, Ellie craned her neck from her chair to look out too. The forest was dark and unmoving, though the cabin had many cracks in the roofs, and they could hear the faint rustling of leaves from above.

Joel turned away from Tommy and Ellie. He would not leave Tommy, and there was no question of him ever parting with Ellie.

"What about here?"

Joel turned, slowly, to see Ellie pointing at a small blip on the map. Long ago, Joel had learned to read maps, and he knew from the closely-packed contour lines that the small village she pointed at sat atop a steep hill coated in thick forest. It would not be easy to get to. He walked back to Ellie slowly, Tommy stayed away, leaning against the window.  _Great_ , Joel thought.  _Sulking._ Tommy and Joel fought a lot when they were younger, and it seemed that being together again would only breed it more and more. Tommy's mind had occupied a dark place in the first years; Joel had been the strong one. He had never truly grieved for Sarah's death. There was no time to mourn, no time to dwell. Even now he remembered only when he dreamt. Joel tried not to dream.

"Tommy?" asked Joel.  _Start making him feel wanted._

Tommy sighed deeply and looked over at the map. His eyes wandered around Ellie's pointed finger for a few moments. "Unoccupied," he said simply.

"For how long?"

"Never been people there whilst we've been here," he continued, loosening up a little. His arms unfolded and struggled to find a place to sit comfortable. "We could sure check up there. Good location."

"Finally," Ellie sighed, "I thought we were gonna die in this fucking cabin." Ellie seemed to pause then, looking to Tommy. His eyes were stuck on the map. She thought of Maria when she spoke of death, though Tommy hadn't clicked on the association. He'd lost too many people to associate death with just one of them. This world tried to take them all away all the time. Sometimes it managed it.  _It won't take Ellie from me, it won't try to take Tommy._ Once, it  _had_  tried to take Tommy. And once, Tommy had tried to go willingly towards it.

" _You survived because of me!"_

" _Well it weren't worth it."_

Joel shrugged off the memory, and heard Ellie speaking.

"... why? We can just cut through here," she said, motioning through the forest. There was a small settlement in the way, and what seemed like sewage treatment near the river.

"No," Tommy said. "Nah we can't go through that way."

"Why the hell not?"

"It's not safe. It's… occupied." Tommy glanced towards Joel, though he didn't hold his gaze.

"What's there, Tommy?" he asked.

He looked pissed, though Joel didn't know why. "How the damn hell am I meant to know?"

"Cut the shit, Tommy," Joel said, too loudly. "The quickest route is through that plant. Ellie's right. Why can't we go through it?"

The clicking came from outside. Only the eyes of the trio moved around, looking for their weapons. Joel spotted his 9mm, but he would be careful not to use it. Ellie's bow was most useful here. There were too many of them. Fire a gun and they'd attract every clicker within half a kilometre would come howling. Ellie was immune to the infection, sure, but she weren't immune to death. Nothing was.

Tommy was aghast with fear. His head seemed to quiver, his hands too were completely unsteady. Joel wondered when the last time Tommy had been faced with the real menace of a clicker, with the bulge of their warped face, their blind eyes, and their mouths rich with the juice of death.  _He's afraid of them again._ Maria was the wartime hero, she cleaned out the dam, it became clear to Joel now, in this strangest of moments. Tommy relished in times of peace, where the world was clean and problems were trivial. Now every move could lead to death, now every rapid breath betrayed them. Ellie was holding her breath, Joel too, but Tommy's came out in ragged gasps, his chest shuddering.

"Tommy," Ellie whispered, warning him to be quiet. "Tommy, they're gonna hear you shitting yourself."

Joel placed a single finger upon his closed mouth.  _Shut up_ , he tried to communicate to his brother.  _They'll hear us._ And Joel could practically feel them upon them. He turned slowly and he saw three around the window. They seemed to feel the window with their heads, looking for an entrance. Their hands were no longer tools to them, only weapons. They had only killing power. Joel had felt them around him. It wasn't what he expected.  _Their hands are warm._ You can feel their pulses even just close to them. Joel wondered if they could hear Tommy's; he could see the blood pounding away at his throat.

Ellie, quietly, walked across the cabin floor. She moved very slowly, afraid that the wooden boards would creak beneath her. From an empty table she lifted her bow. Joel hoped she wouldn't have to use it. His sole worry was that Tommy would give them away, and that Ellie would be hurt. Joel felt some pang of guilt at that, but there were more important things to be worried about. He watched them from the corner of his eye. The clicking continued, filling the room, even from outside. Surely they knew they were standing at a wall, even if it was a window. Slowly, they staggered around the cabin. From the inside Joel could see shapes moving between the cracks. Tommy began to wince, and the clickers screamed. They began to run around the cabin, a ferocious sprint, their dead voices screaming high and cold and piercing.

Ellie looked at Joel, searching for advice. Tentatively he approached Tommy and placed his hands on his shoulders. "Come on, little brother," he whispered. Joel doubted even Ellie could hear him. Tommy's eyes stuck on Joel's and they hung there. His eyes were dark and bloodshot, his eyelids twitching frantically, his eyes were stuck somewhere else, somewhere behind Joel. They were grey and old, eyes that wanted to cry. It had been a long time since Joel had seen Tommy cry.  _Leave me_ , he had pleaded through tears.  _Let me die, Joel. Please let me die._  There wasn't time for this, and the memory made Joel angry. He couldn't console him. Not when they were right outside and when Ellie was at risk. He felt the guilt, and then he pushed it away, and then he slapped Tommy hard across the jaw.

Tears fell down his face as if released from the shock; his eyes blinked rapidly once or twice more and then they stopped, resting on Joel's. They sat there, phasing in and out.

Ellie came over slowly and stared between the two of them. She looked  _worried_. "Don't worry," he whispered to her.

"What the fuck is wrong with him?"

 _Not now, Tommy._ "Come on, Tommy," he whispered. Joel wondered if he would be willing to leave Tommy to save Ellie. He had killed so many people to save her, he had taken lives and he had felt no regret for it, but could he leave his brother to die in a cabin for her? Joel didn't want to imagine the answer. "Let's get to that little fucking town. Come on. Let's get there." Joel moved back a little, but Tommy's eyes did not move. Tommy's eyes were not focused on Joel. Joel looked behind him. The infected were at the window, and Tommy stared right at them. They couldn't see him but he was watching them. "Looking at them isn't helping, Tommy –"

"Joel," Ellie said softly. His head moved a little to see her, though she was not looking at him. Her eyes too were focused on the window.  _Shit they've got in_ , he thought, but they hadn't. They hadn't got in at all. They were still at the window, shuffling around the window. There were maybe a dozen of them around the cabin, all clicking and howling at once, drawing more near. He watched them, and then he realised as Ellie said it. "That's – that's Roger."

Roger had been the guard, the sheep from his camp. They had scarcely been gone a day and they were infected. Joel recognised the clothes now; not just Roger, but the others – the small pin that even Tommy still wore to symbolise that he was a member of the group. All of them. Infected. Tommy stared at them. Tommy stared at the people that had once been his neighbours and his friends.

"Should have been me," Tommy murmured. "Should have been me?"

 _Don't have fucking time for this. They'll find the god damn door eventually._ He searched the cabin, but it was small and there was little to search through – two rooms, one main room and another that would probably have served as a kitchen. There were signs on the walls, addressed to tourists. This was probably a base for forest rangers. Joel wondered in passing if this was once a conservation area, and almost smiled at the thought. Almost.

"Joel," he heard, too loud again. The clickers banged on the walls, the wooden logs that made up the cabin creaked. They seemed to want to give way. Joel turned to see Ellie with a rug in her hands, slowly sliding it up and away.  _A storm cellar_.  _Yes, yes, yes._ He crouched and slowly approached it. Ellie seemed excited, smiling and looking at Joel. He put his hand around the metal bolt and pulled it open. The  _clang_  made them scream more outside, and the door began to shake. The old rusted hinges began to burst, a nail bulging out; they wailed and screamed, hungry for flesh, hungry to kill.

He tugged hard at the wooden hatch, but it wouldn't give way.  _Come on, come_ _on_. He pulled harder, and felt it hold itself down – it was bolted from the other side too. "Fuck," he muttered. "Get me a knife." Ellie scattered around the room and found his backpack, reaching a hand inside. She grunted in pain and pulled a shiv from his backpack. She ran back over to Joel – he noticed Tommy coming to, his head looking from side to side, the infected moved away from the window, his eyes heavy red-lidded – and gave him the knife. They screamed more. They banged. Joel heard a nail touch the floor, the door slowly being lifted off the hinge.  _It's just made of wood._

He jammed the knife in and raked it up and down, feeling for the bolt.  _Fuck fuck._ He felt Tommy behind him, looking down, and he forced harder. He felt the shiv break and he kept at it, and the bolt clicked open.

And then the doors collapsed, and they came.

"FUCK, JOEL!"

"GET BEHIND ME!"

They both took steps back. Ellie fired arrows into them, head and chest and head and chest. Joel grabbed his rifle and fired with his semi-automatic rifle, blood and intestine trailing and spurting from the chest cavity he opened. He fired at another in the head and they both fell together. "Get down the hole," he shouted at Ellie. Tommy was already in the hole, running down the stairs.

"Joel!" Ellie said.  _She's going to argue._

"GET IN THE CELLAR, ELLIE!"

"Shit," she said. She kept steady and walked slowly towards the entrance that was too close to the door for Joel to be happy. He kept at her side, as he always wanted to be able to do, as dipped a foot into the cellar. Some tried to follow her, still staggering in from the door – and then one grabbed her.

"No," Joel muttered, and he fired and fired and fired, but then one got in the way.  _No, no, no, no, fucking no, get away from her, fucking no._ He fired and there were so many bodies, maybe he had shot Roger, and he kept firing. He pulled the trigger and it clicked and it didn't fire and he ran towards them; he ran towards them and as he ran he heard Ellie scream. In that moment he knew he would never forget the sound of her scream; the sound of his life crashing around him; of all he had left dying in front of him. He slapped the infected in the temple with his rifle, and it fell – and then he dived. He dived down the stairs, onto the infected.

Joel tumbled with Ellie and the clicker, its face in his, its mouth buried in Ellie's hand, blood leaking from him. The orange of its head seemed withered with moss, its skin shrivelled and dry, like paper. Up close it smelled like sick and piss. When they landed he felt something sharp underneath him, and he grabbed it. He shoved the broken shiv into the back of its throat, tearing at the flesh. He heard them groan from above him, and got to his feet. It moved again and then a hard boot crushed its skull. Joel felt the 9mm on his belt be lifted away. Shots rang out, and bodies began to tumble down the stairs.

Ellie was on the floor of the cavern, blood and an almost luminous green leaked from her wound.  _Oh fuck. Oh fuck._

"Ellie, Ellie are you okay?" Joel asked, lifting her hand, lifting her.

She inclined her head, looking down the bastard that bit her as he carried her away. "I wish his face wasn't smashed so I could fucking punch it," she said, trying to smile. There were tears in her eyes and her clothes were patterned with blood.

"Tommy, come on.  _TOMMY_!"

Joel glanced back as he flew on down the cavern, into what seemed like an endless darkness… he saw Tommy behind him, holding them back with a pistol that was going to soon run out of ammunition. He saw Ellie's bow on the floor.  _Just grab the ammo_. But they couldn't grab the ammo, because it was in the cabin. A cabin full to burst with infected; they couldn't go back there now. They had to push onwards, into the darkness.

* * *

It seemed like they had wandered for hours before they found any light. Caverns gave way to sewers, weak lights and the stench of shit everywhere.  _Old, festering shit._  Joel still held Ellie, though she'd asked to walk twice and he'd tried, she'd stumbled. They were still following behind, as far as Joel knew. Stopping at this point was not an affordable option. Silently they walked, sometimes they ran.

"Where is – urgh – the electricity coming from?" Ellie asked, nodding at the lights. She grunted in pain every now and again. Her wound would need to be cleaned and dressed, she would need medication that Joel worried they would not be able to find, but she should live.

"Petrol generator, I guess," Joel answered.

"Don't they have to be refilled?"

"Yeah," said Tommy before Joel could. "They do." His voice seemed to suggest a longing for an answer, confusion. Tommy had said very little since they had entered the caverns, and always a few feet ahead of them, gun outstretched. It couldn't have more than two bullets left.

As they walked Joel thought in silence. He thought of how glad he was that Ellie was still alive; that he was glad Tommy had been there to make sure she was alive.  _If Tommy hadn't frozen, they might have left, Ellie wouldn't need help_ , he thought – and then he felt guilty. It was his brother, after all. He had suffered loss on a massive scale. He had known those people.  _They turned so quickly_ , he thought.  _We last saw them maybe eighteen, nineteen hours ago. Less than a day._ He thought about it as they plodded on. They turned so quickly. He wondered what had happened to Jackson, and what was left.  _We can't go back. We can never go back now._

"Where do you think we are?" Ellie asked some time later. They walked on the side of a small river of still, brown water. Joel had hoped he'd acclimatise to the smell, but he didn't; it seemed to get worse. Ellie didn't complain at all of the smell, still held tightly in his arms, though they'd started to ache a while back.

"Seems to me that place was for something. Tourists maybe." Ellie gave him a look.  _Tourists_ had a new meaning. "A tourist was someone who visited a place for a holiday, for time away. Maybe the caverns were built to take them on an adventure." And what was once fun for people now became the only thing keeping them alive. Once, guns had been fun for some people too – they had argued over their rights as citizens of the United States; some denounced guns as outdated, others held them high as light against the darkness of tyrannical government.

"That's cool," she said weakly.

 _How I wish I could introduce a couple of old gun-nuts to FEDRA, then they'd know tyrannical government all right._ The entire world had been affected by the cordyceps; Joel wondered how countries without guns had managed. The United Kingdom and the rest of Europe; Japan and Australia, most of Asia. They wouldn't have made it this far without a gun. He'd have been killed when the Coopers first turned; when Jimmy had bust through the glass into his house and tried to kill him and Sarah. He'd put a bullet in Jimmy's head. The night played over in his head.

_Jimmy, just stay back. Jimmy, I am warning you. Don't!_

Jimmy Cooper was the first infected Joel killed, and the first he did no regret.  _I did everything I did for my little girl and I'd do it again._ And she'd died anyway.  _Don't think about it here, not now._ But here in the weak lights and the shit, there's little to do but think. They couldn't speak too much for fear of being heard. There was something about these weak, steady lights that Joel did not like. The infected could not see the light; they knew only the darkness. At the beginning, before they really  _turned_ , Joel knew they could still see. In the beginning of the change, there was still a bit of the human left in there, reduced to primal fury and hunger, but they were in pain and they were confused. They were sick people and Joel felt truly sorry for them. Each infected they saw was a person who had mourned their own death; whether they were scratched or bitten, they knew. They had waited to die, as Ellie once had, but she never did. No, the infected could not see the light. It was nothing to them, but people… they used the light. The light was their weapon. They cloak themselves in light, the guise of hope, and then they slit your throat while you sleep. Joel knew the human way all too well.  _I've been the human way._

Joel looked around for something to tell him where they were, though at first he couldn't see anything. Then, under the weak, waxy yellow of one of the lights he saw a map. "Tommy," he said. His brother turned and Joel nodded his head towards it. "Recognise the place?"

Tommy bit his bottom lip and stared at the map for a few seconds, and then he closed his eyes. "We're in the Greener; the sewage treatment plant. Fuck," he muttered. He seemed to tighten his grip on the gun. "We've gotta go back."

"Are you fucking with me, Tommy? We are not goin' back. We keep goin'."

"Joel –"

"This ain't up for discussion, Tommy. Keep walking," he said and, with some trepidation, he did. He seemed to walk slower, his gun aimed more steadily. Even his breathing was slower; Ellie said nothing and closed her eyes, resting her tired head against Joel's shoulder. If there were people here, surely they'd have medicine? Antibiotics? He used to keep it in a cupboard in the kitchen. When Sarah had been ill and young, she had climbed up on a chair to fetch some.

"Sarah doesn't look so great," Tommy said in passing as Joel made him a coffee.

"Yeah, she's ill right now. Oh, that reminds me, baby girl, come on over here so I can give you your medicine."

"I taked all my medicine," she said, her little smile lighting up his world.

"What?" He opened the cupboard and found no bottle. "Where is your medicine, baby?"

"Behind sofa," she said, skipping away.

Needless to say, he discovered an empty bottle.

 _I'd kill for a cupboard like that. Maybe when we get to the town._  He just hoped Ellie+ would hang on that long, though he knew she would. She always did. She had nursed him back to health where anybody else would have surely left him to die; he would do the same for her.

"What's wrong with this facility anyway? All the shit?" Ellie asked as they rounded a corner, the lights starting to burn a little brighter, but flickering. Sometimes darkness smothered the room for one, two full seconds. It was little time, but it felt like a thousand starless nights were passing. They held their breaths a little. Well, except Ellie. She continued.

There was a long, heavy pause. Finally, Tommy sighed. "I don't really know. We sent out two ranging teams here and never got 'em back." He paused again.  _Worried you're gonna see them again, little brother?_  "Either infected or hunters, I guess, and these lights seem to narrow it down even further."

"Let's just keep going," Joel said, bringing the conversation to a conclusion. They rounded corners and travelled in straight lines, they twisted and turned and went through old doors that Joel reckoned hadn't been used in a while.  _These parts of the tunnels are probably abandoned._ But eventually they reached doors where the cobwebs had been brushed away. They started to walk slower, steadier, Tommy's hand seemed to shake a little, but Joel told him to calm down. They heard noises and ruffles and quickly side-stepped into a patch of darkness, where wall jutted out at an angle that helped conceal them.

"Maybe we imagined it," Tommy said.

"All three of us?" Ellie said.

Tommy moved out, pistol pointed. Slowly they made their way further down the corridor and saw light spilling onto stone stairs. They saw the outside, but then they heard noises again – noises from outside. Tommy reached for the door they had come out –  _please don't be locked_ – and it opened.

Tommy ushered Joel and Ellie inside and then went in himself. Candles flickered behind them but they paid them no mind. They listened carefully, ear against the door. There were noises no noises coming from behind it, the noises seemed to be coming from elsewhere, from somewhere closer…

"Joel," Ellie said. "Fuck, Joel. Look," she said. She didn't move at all, her head trained on something ahead of her. Joel looked and he saw them.

There were two clickers gagged and bound to two tables beside each another with a gap in between. Withered petals covered their naked bodies like a ceremonious cloak; there were candles around them on the tables, some of the wax melted into their sagging and wrinkled skin. In the one on the left you could see they used to be large, fat, before they turned. The excess hung, flat on table. They groaned and moaned, their skin splodged and red where they could see it. He turned away from them, to shield Ellie from it. "I don't want you looking at this."

"The sick  _fucks_ ," she said. "Who  _does_ that?"

Tommy's eyes were fixed on the clickers. They groaned and clicked, it almost seemed pathetic. Joel wanted to use their last two bullets to end this, but they wouldn't. He approached them slowly, their clicking grew more intense. "They're wet. They've been soaked in water or something." There was a long silence, but Joel would not look around. He would not let Ellie see this. "Their hands have holes in them. What the fuck..."

"Come on," Joel said, "we've got to get outta here. I feel sick."

"You and me both," Ellie said.

Tommy nodded and came back, opening the door. Scooting Ellie up his arms a little, he followed Tommy out the door. At the top of the stone steps was light, the outside. Joel couldn't stop thinking about what he'd just seen.  _You'd gotta have a fucking sickness of the mind to do that._

Tommy moved up the stairs first, slowly, peeping out. He waved Joel up, who followed, Ellie in hands. His arms were truly aching now; a full-throated throb that he was sure Ellie could feel. He wouldn't complain; she'd demand to be put down, or Tommy would ask to take her.  _Nobody else is taking her_ , he thought.

Joel closed his eyes a little as he moved up the stairs, the light disoriented him; his eyes stung and wanted to be closed, but he wouldn't. For now he'd face the light. For a little while. He felt the air of the predatory world on his face, and he almost smiled.

There were well-armed patrols spread out through the facility, usually in groups of two or three. Though there weapons were of high-grade and probably had ammunition, their armour was shoddy, unpolished so that it do not quite catch the light.  _The light isn't a disguise for these savages_ , Joel thought.  _These fuckers relish the dark._  Their armour wasn't of quality enough to be equitable to FEDRA, so Joel doubted they were providing this group – as he knew they did with some – with the means to control territory.

Tommy, quietly, coordinated with Joel. They moved behind giant trucks and great crates of god knows what. When Joel saw the people moving in and around, back and forward, never in any real routine, he felt sick. No matter how abominable the infected; there was a line.  _These bastards crossed it._ Good and evil were concepts that only existed before, but Joel thought this was the closest to evil they would ever come.

They seemed to go around the entire complex before they found a hole in the fence. It was writhed with metal barbs and ringlets with sharp parts jutting out at the top, so there only option had been to keep going around. In the distance, Joel could see the entrance. Ellie looked too; two towers of reinforced steel, at the top there were snipers, though they faced the opposite direction, way off where the hill rose and the forest wasn't so thick. They ducked through the metal fence, with some difficulty; without Tommy, Joel could not have helped Ellie through it. They fed her through like a lace through the eyes of a shoe, and then they kept going. They saw the steep hills and the thick trees. Some way up the hill Joel looked back and saw the complex; small, with giant empty vats all around the place. It sat on the banks of the Snake.

It was some way up the island that Joel felt Ellie go limp in his arms.

* * *

 **PS:** Oh, a cliffhanger, how naughty of me. Hope you liked what you read! Read, review, follow and favourite if you'd like more. You guys are what keeps me moving this along! Otherwise I'd have left it long ago :(

 **Also,** someone pointed out to me that it takes a long time to become clickers, and this is completely correct, but there  _is a plot point in there._ This isn't unintentional, something has changed. The second line - These clickers were something different, something new. - was meant to clear that up, but it didn't. I'll clarify the trio's confusion further in the next chapter.


	6. ELLIE III

* * *

**ELLIE III  
**

* * *

There's a dark room, and a corpse on the floor. The person's skin looked shone like old wax, thick eyebrows and hair on his upper lip. A girl with a dark skin, a hard nose and thick lips leans against the wall.  _Riley_ , she thinks.  _We've been bitten. We've both been bitten._ She rubs her arm, feeling where the skins rises and bumps, a deep gouge. "It only took one of them," Ellie felt herself say.

Riley nodded, keeping silent. She had a bite on the side of her throat, though it wasn't as deep as Ellie's. The runner had come from nowhere. "I guess you were right," she said at last.

"Huh?"

"All that talk about the future didn't mean anything at all," she said with a kind of sad smile. Ellie and her were going to die. They were going to turn, and they would be lost… she wondered what came next.

"We still have a future," Ellie said.

"Until some hunter mows us down."

"Yeah."

Ellie moved around the body in the middle of the floor and sat against the wall with her friend, with her best friend. Riley bit her bottom lip, looking at the body on the floor. It had sunk with a thud after it had mauled her arm and Riley's throat, an old rusted axe lodged in the back of its skull. The weapon still protruded, buried deep.

"Maybe this isn't so bad. This world's a fucking mess anyway. Let's just wait it out. Y'know, we can be all poetic and just lose our minds together."

And then the memory clouded and she was elsewhere… beyond, Somewhere, she could hear voices. Voices she knew, and a voice she didn't. They muttered lowly, she felt her stir and she tried hard to open her eyes, but then she drifted away again, off into the ether…

The spotlights flickered left and right, and Ellie struggled to keep up with Joel and Tess. The rain was heavy and made moving a challenge, the mud holding her feet for longer than she wanted.  _Keep up, Ellie. Come on keep up._ They stopped sometimes in cover, waiting for the military to pass. Tess held her eyes for a while once, in a bus.  _Tess_ , she'd think.  _Tell her not to get bitten._ But there wasn't time, and she was gone again.

A woman, light brown skin and hair tied up and coiled and wild, stood in front of her. She was sitting on a bed, and the woman kneeled down before her. "Honey, something's happened," she said.  _No, no_. "It's your mom." She wanted to scream, but there wasn't time for that either –

She was lying on something hard, eyes closed tight.  _I'm awake_ , she thought, but she wasn't. There was something cramped about where she was, and it sloped uncomfortably. She tried to open her eyes… there was a roof, and a trickle of light that made her eyes close again.  _I'm in the back of a car_ , she thought. There was a heavy silence; there were people outside, she knew.

"You'd just come after her," Joel said, and there was a shot. She woke up.

"Ellie," said the same voice. "Ellie, are you okay?"

"What's going on? Who's been shot? Joel?"

"No one's been shot, Ellie."

"You were bitten," said another voice, southern like Joel's, but deeper, his drawl was thick and his word seemed to slur into each another, as if he'd been drinking. "No doubt the infection got into your blood. You had a hell of a fever, little lady. And the fever dreams ain't normal dreams."

Ellie saw the man, leaning on a table. He was short and fat; his nose looked as if it'd been broken at least twice. His brown beard was short and rolled into a patchy grey moustache that covered the top of his lip. There was a green baseball cap on his head that covered his hair, though no doubt it was greying too. "Uh, yeah," she said uneasily. She looked to Joel.  _Who the hell is this guy?_

"We cleared up the wound," Joel continued. "You've been takin' antibiotics and it's been getting smaller, but it's likely you're gonna have a matching pair for the bite on yer other arm."

"You got a special gift, little lady," said the other man again.

"Who are you?"

"This is Bobby," Joel said quickly, before the man could say a word. He must have saw the words come out before she said them. "Old friend of Tommy's." Joel kept his eyes on Ellie, but it seemed more that he was trying not to look at the other man than wanting to look at Ellie.

"How long have I been out?"

"About six days. You've been pretty quiet, but you've been muttering in your sleep. I hear you."

"You hear her because you don't leave her side," Bobby said, walking closer to the two.

The bed she was on was comfortable, but it'd been a long time since she'd been able to sleep in a real bed, so anything softer than the ground with a roof over her head was a bed to Ellie. The room itself was pink; toys were piled high, erupting from a box in the opposite corner of the room. Ellie was very aware at that point that it had been someone's home once. She wondered if it was Bobby's.  _Doubt it._

"Where are we?"

"We're in the little village we talked about."

"The one on the hill?" she asked, to be sure.

"The same one."

"Is it safe?"

"It's safe," Bobby said. He stood behind Joel, who had knelt over and sat beside the bed. Ellie pushed herself up. "It ain't a big town. I think it was once for park rangers and the like."

Tommy came into the room. Unlike Joel, he'd changed his clothes – a new blue shirt on, no doubt there was a bulletproof vest underneath, though Ellie couldn't see it. Joel didn't turn but Bobby did, and, though Ellie couldn't see whatever look Bobby gave him, there was a faceful of spite sent back.

"Did you find what you needed?"

"I did, yes. Nearly lost my damn legs in the process," he added, slowly and deliberately.

"I told you how to avoid them."

Tommy ignored him and closed the door, moving down beside Joel. He gave him a white box speckled with words. She couldn't see them, but she knew they were some sort of drugs. She'd come across them little enough that, when she did see them, she recognised them. Joel murmured some thanks as he took them out and offered Ellie one with a glass of cool water. She swallowed two of them.

The silence was enough to make Ellie want to be the one to break it. "How did you nearly lose your legs?"

Tommy grinded his teeth together and then clenched his jaw. "Someone," he said with pause for emphasis, "rigged this town worse than a damn military base."

"That  _someone_  is still alive, Tommy, unlike the rest of the damn town."

"Tabby ain't, is she? You –"

"Stop," Joel said. "Stop it the pair a ya. I don't wanna hear it, Ellie don't wanna hear it. Shut your damn traps." He turned then, looking at both of them.  _They saved Joel and me more than once in Bill's town_ , she thought, but she wouldn't press it any further; she had a basic idea of the situation. Maybe she'd ask Joel later. "There are more important things here, god damn it. There was something wrong with those clickers, for starters."

"They seemed pretty normal to me," Ellie said, wanting to undo the dressing around her bite and see what the wound looked like. It was morbid, sure, but she was curious.

"Nah," Joel said. "The timeline don't add up."

"Timeline?" Tommy asked.

"They went from non-infected to clickers in less than a day. That don't happen."

"Pardon me sayin' I don't believe you, but I don't," said Bobby, who had moved back over to lean on the table by the door. "It takes months, sometimes a year." Ellie knew that much to be true. Riley had become one of them; a runner. They had even been bitten by one of them, until Riley had put an axe in his skull when he turned on Ellie.  _If only I'd been faster. I wouldn't be the only one still alive. Riley deserved to live. She shoulda lived._

"Maybe something changed in the spores. Maybe the disease changed somehow," Joel said.

Tommy shook his head. "No, Ellie would be infected. She's only immune to the one…  _strain_  of spore, so if there were a new one…"

"Ellie isn't immune," Joel said. All heads span towards him, including Ellie's. "It's not  _Ellie_  that's different, it's the condition inside her."

"How d'you know that?" Tommy asked.

"The – the Fireflies explained it to me, in Salt Lake City," his eyes moved back to Ellie for a second. There was something he wasn't saying, though she didn't pay any attention to it. She wanted him to explain. "The spores mutated inside her… a new version of fungus where it lives inside the host, but it doesn't change them. Ellie is infected, but the fungus…  _co-exists._ "

Bobby didn't seem to like that. He shifted from one foot to the other, and then back again. "You're telling me the girl's god damn  _infected_? You told me –"

"I told you the truth. She's not gonna turn."

Ellie wasn't so sure. Somehow, she knew she wasn't going to change into one of them, but still she worried, secretly.  _What if I did turn?_ Dark thoughts moved around in her head, and then she felt Joel's hand clasp her own. "Don't worry. You aren't gonna turn."

"And she damn ain't staying in this town either," said Bobby. "You  _lied_ to me." He pointed a finger at Tommy and moved closer towards him threateningly. They were both fuming.

"Another kid for you to be responsible for killing," Tommy said, but before he had finished the sentence Bobby had swung at him, a fist bashing into the side of his head. He moved to hit him with the other too but Joel was up, pushing the bigger man away.

"You touch my little brother again and I will break your legs," he said.

Bobby's face became a bright red. "I take you into the safety of  _my town_  and I get insults. No. I want you gone. You, and your brother, and the little girl."

"Stop calling me  _little girl_ , asswipe."

"Listen to me you little bitch – "

Joel punched him in the face, and again, and again. Bobby did not take it as easily as Tommy did, but he took it all the same. He tried to defend himself, to fight back, but he couldn't, and when Joel finally stopped his face was bloodied and battered and his cap was on the floor.  _Looks like your nose is gonna be even more crooked, dickhead._ Ellie got up and stood beside Tommy.

Bobby breathed deeply for a few seconds, saying nothing, wiping the blood away from his nose. "If you ain't out of my damn town within half an hour I am gonna blow this house up with you all in it." He saved another glance for Tommy, licking his lips, smudging a dribble of blood. He looked as though he was going to add something, but he left, slamming the door.

"I've been awake for ten minutes," Ellie said, "and my head hurts already."

"He always was a loud-ass," Tommy said.

"How d'you know that guy?"

"He was in the settlement for a while, then he left."

"Why?"

"Another day," he said.

Joel was still facing the door, frozen. "Joel, what's happening now?"

His head flickered back around for a second and then he turned fully. "Well," he said, "I doubt he'd blow us up –"

"– don't be so sure," Tommy interrupted quickly.

"– but we gotta get going."

"Where?"

"I don't know yet."

"You do," Tommy said.

"We've talked about this Tommy. I said  _no_."

"Joel, it makes sense. We go in, we come out, fast. Done before they know it."

"Someone please tell me what the hell you're talking about," Ellie said, irritated. She knew that her decision would be taken seriously by Joel; sometimes she suspected he thought Joel treated her more seriously than Tommy, and he noticed.

Joel bit his bottom lip, unwilling to continue, but Tommy looked at him in a beckoning kind of way. "Tommy wants to go back down to the damn treatment plant."

"What? Why?"

"There are trucks down there," he said. "Working trucks. We didn't see many guards down there when we came out. They're ripe for the pickin'! Joel thinks it's a bad idea."

"Did you see what was in that room, Tommy? Did you see those infected? We can't risk it. We don't have any real supplies, they're all in that damn cabin… Ellie can't work a bow with the bite – god only knows if she can move her damn fingers properly yet."

"There aren't any alternatives, Joel. It's either that or we walk for miles. There's nothing around her for miles, and we can't go through north through the forest. It's like the damn Bermuda triangle for people out there."

Ellie sat back down on the bed and Joel made to stand at her side. Tommy walked away, looking out of the window. In the distance Ellie could see the sun descending into a thick cloak of forest.

"Tommy's right," Ellie said at last.

"Ellie –"

"Listen, Joel. It's getting dark. We need somewhere to stay. If we managed to get out of the plant in the middle of the day, we can get inside in the middle of the night." Ellie was too realistic to think they wouldn't be seen, but it didn't seem like such a leap to think they could get in a truck and drive it away.  _We've been through worse._

Joel's head wandered away from her and Tommy, who had turned around. He stared for a few moments before turning back. "I don't like this, Tommy."

"Either way we gotta move. I don't wanna find out of Bobby wants to make truth of his threats."

Joel rose, and Ellie did too. "Okay," he said. "But we do this on my terms."

Tommy nodded and Ellie smiled. "You're the boss," she said.

* * *

They didn't have many supplies to gather up, so there pack-up time was short. Joel had a rifle that he was given from Bobby and Tommy had a revolver, which Ellie had picked up he couldn't use very well. True enough, the small weapons packed a punch but the recoil and noise was sizeable too; this would be a problem where they were going. Joel would have the good sense not to use his weapon except where he really, really had to…  _I hope Tommy has the same damn sense._

As if reading her mind, Joel said: "Don't use that unless you need to."

Tommy didn't say anything, he kept straight. His revolver was tucked into his side, but Joel held his rifle instead of having it slung over his back. They were moving slowly out of the town, Joel and Tommy's eyes were trained on the floor and above.

"Why are we moving so slow?" she asked.

"Bobby's got a great habit of puttin' down traps," Joel explained, not taking his eyes away from the road ahead. Only two houses were ahead of them – one on the left, one on the right – and then the road stretched into the darkness of trees. The sun fell quicker when it wasn't watched, and when they emerged from the house – not minding the sun – all that remained was a faint glow over the forest ahead.

"That's west," Joel said.

"Huh?"

He kept ahead of Ellie. She had tried to stand beside him once, but he had asked her to fall back a bit. She always kept behind anyway, trusting Joel to do his things.  _But I do what I can to help._

"The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. West is that way," his finger traced the sliver of dying light in the distance. She wished the sun would come again. The dark made her uneasy. It had been in the dark she was bitten.  _Both times_ , she thought.  _But I suppose some cover is a good thing. A little darkness never killed nobody._

"I'll try and remember that."

"I remember that Japan is the land of the risin' sun, and Japan's in the east."

"Japan?"

"It's a place. In the east."

"No shit," she laughed.

They began their descent into the forest. Crickets clicked on and on and on, though the noise didn't worry Ellie. It was a natural noise, part of the forest songs that were here before the infected, and would be here after. She wondered if people had treated it differently when they weren't afraid all the time, when you didn't have to be alert of spores or infected, all you had to worry about was falling and breaking your ankle.

"What's the deal with Tommy and Bobby?" Ellie asked, lowering her voice. Tommy was further down the hill, walking by himself, and Ellie reckoned him to be outside of earshot. She saw Joel checking (and reaching the same conclusion) before he spoke.

"Bobby's paranoid –"

"I hadn't guessed."

"One day Bobby put down too many traps in Jackson. He was asked to deactivate them all, and he lied and said he did. From what I can tell, something went wrong. Someone died. A little girl, I think." Moonlight slanted through the trees, and she could see Joel's outline shrug lightly. Though Ellie couldn't be sure, she thought he looked sad. "And then he left."

"Think we'll see him again?"

"Not if this plan works out."

When they reached the facility again they could see the guards moving in pairs. There weren't many of them; two spotlights slung down light from the two guard towers by the main entrance, but they rounded it and entered via the hole in the fence they did before. Ellie flexed her fingers; she had control of them, but her hand still felt weak, numb, like she'd been sitting on it. When the three of them were through, they crept around, crouched low and hiding behind containers. A guard came out of a building and saw them, and afterwards Ellie thought of how brave he was – the man went for the whistle round his neck before his gun. Joel hid the man's now-lifeless body inside the building where he came, the door creaking loudly as it swung open and shut, though nobody seemed to notice.

When Joel came back out, Tommy and Ellie were still crouched behind a container. There were no guards around them, so they beat on…

"I think they're made to be quiet," Tommy said. "Normal people don't keep quiet like that."

 _Soldiers do_ , Ellie thought.

There were three trucks, and they tried the doors on each one before they resorted to more crude tactics. Luckily, the last one they tried (and unfortunately the one nearest the main entrance), opened on demand. "Voila," said Tommy, and they all climbed in.

It was spacious and smelled bad.

"What is that smell?" Ellie asked.

"Sweat, and this," he said, holding up the decaying air freshener hanging from the mirror. Ellie tried to put the kindling of the mingling of sweat and old lemon out of her mind whilst Tommy reached underneath the steering wheel and began to fumble around quietly with something. Growing increasingly frustrated, he scowled. "God damn it," he said. "Can't get the panel off. We can't hotwire it. We're gonna need a key."

Joel, who had been looking out of the window, now turned back to Tommy, livid. "Are you kiddin' me, Tommy? We risked our damn necks on the promise that you could hotwire the damn car."

"Relax, big brother," he said, bringing out a small piece of paper. "They don't hide their messages too well."

"Let me see it," Joel said, taking it from him. He squinted at it in the darkness; the handwriting was an untidy scrawl of red ink, but it wasn't hard to make out.  _Keys in the main control room._  "No, Tommy," Ellie heard as soon as she had finished reading.

"Hey, if you don't wanna come, that's fine, but I'm goin' in. I'm getting us out of here."

"Tommy, this is fuckin' stupid –"

"I got us  _into_  this mess, Joel. I wanted us to go back to the dam, I wanted us to hide in the cabin. I'm gonna do something right for once."

Joel scowled. "You're a piece of work," he said, but Ellie knew he was going to give up. "Ellie –"

"Fuck you I'm coming," she said, expecting it.

"I know you are," he said. Ellie thought she made out a very faint smile. "No way in hell I'm leaving you in a truck."

"Good."

They searched around them using the mirrors and then clambered out of the truck. They had to be careful on the way down; the steps were big and the fall to the ground could mean their detection. After landing lightly, they headed off towards the entrance. Guards came and went, but they left the doors open and it seemed almost too easy to sneak past them – they faced the main entrance the entire way.  _These soldiers are dumbfucks_ , Ellie thought with a smile, and they moved on in.

"I don't think they have the force to guard the entire facility," Tommy said. "They'll concentrate on the outside and the inside will be empty."

Tommy was right enough. They moved on in, searching for the control room. There were signs all along the way, untouched by even rust, well-preserved. They kept low, still, checking corners before they rounded them, listening for footsteps and murmurs from ahead. They didn't speak much, other than to communicate directions. Ellie kept it in mind that these people were the ones who bound the infected, like animals.  _They're all sick fucks. If we see them…_

"I told you we'd be fine," Tommy said quietly.

"We aren't done yet, Tommy."

Ellie felt bad.  _Something's really off about this,_  she thought, but in truth it was no more than the run-of-the-mill feeling she had when they were in a place she didn't know, and sometimes places that she did. Ellie had never stayed in one place for a long time. Even when she had been with her mom and Marlene, they'd moved a lot. That had only got worse after her mom had died. She remembered the dream. She remembered Marlene telling her, a memory she thought she'd lost… a memory she hoped she'd lost.  _I felt lost after it_ , she thought, then pushed away.  _It's not the time, Ellie. Pull yourself together._

" _You'd just come after her."_

She kept her eyes ahead, but they drifted towards Joel as they walked and she wondered… she wondered what it meant.  _Maybe I'll ask him_ , she thought.  _Later._  They reached the control room soon enough, and to their surprise the door was open. There was one man inside the control room, spinning lazily on a chair. When he heard the door he began to speak.

"Look what the cat drag – wha–?" he asked, and then his eyes widened when he saw their guns, and he reached for a button. Joel slammed the butt of his rifle into his forehead and he fell over. A small line of blood trickled from his temple down the side of his face, a bloody tear.

"Look for the keys," Joel said, breaking everyone's stare at the man. The three of them began to look through drawers; for the most part the room was small and dull. There were two metal cabinets against the left wall, and a great glass window overlooked the entrance yard.  _We should have been able to see it from the truck_ , Ellie thought. She could see the edge of the truck from where she stood. They opened drawers and cabinets, but it was in the man's pocket that they found the giant ringlet of keys. Joel tucked them into his backpack, and then they heard the footsteps from outside, and the voices.

"Shit, get in the cabinets," he said. Ellie and he clambered into a cabinet, and Tommy made for the next one, but it was locked, and before he could react they opened the door. He made to take out his gun but a shot rang out and it fell from his hand, which bled. He gave a shout of pain.

"Move again," said a voice, "and I'll have to put a bullet in your head, m'afraid."

" _Stay_  where you  _are_ ," Tommy said. Ellie understood immediately; he was talking to her and Joel, not the man.  _There's too many of them_ , he was saying.  _They have guns._

"I don't think you're really in the position to say," said the man. Ellie felt Joel squirm uncomfortable at her side, and they peered through the thin slats that allowed light into the cabinets.  _What's wrong?_ She wanted to say.

The man came further into the room, and Ellie could see what he was wearing, all black – it seemed to her a replica of the clothes that the priest would wear when she was dragged to the service by her mom, but without the collar. The quarantine zone had one priest, Father Johnston, an old man with a thick Scottish accent, too fond of drink and not fond enough of the god he preached to love. She could understand why god had less relevance, but Joel had told her once that religion used to be big, huge, everywhere…

Ellie tried hard to see the man's face, though it proved difficult. The fedora that he wore blocked it off.

"… Frances?" Tommy asked. Men rounded behind the man in the fedora.  _Frances_.

"M'afraid so, Tommy. Funny that you should wander into my little home, I was just thinking about you. I saw you pass through here, what was it, a week ago? I wanted to come and say hello, but you looked to be in  _such_  a rush. I watched you from this room, in fact. Just like I watched you come in today."

"You what?"

"Where are your friends? Joel, your brother. And the little girl… that special little girl. I'd very much like to meet her."

"Frances, let me go – Joel and Ellie went into the sewers below." Ellie wished she could see Tommy. This Frances meant nothing to her…  _Wait, no, wait – him! I saw him at Jackson. He was part of Tommy's ranging crew we met up with. He was a part of Tommy's crew… why wouldn't he let him go?_

"That just won't do," he said, tutting. The man looked around the room a little, and his eyes fell upon the guard they had hit. "Is he dead?"

"Not sure."

"Check," he said, and two of the guards ran forward, checking.

"He's alive," one of them said.

"Gods be good," Frances said.

"Wait – how are you here, leading a band of hunters? You were with me in Jackson for so long. You moved up the ladder real quick."

"Ah, but I was always on this particular ladder. I left every few days and divided up my time, but now I get to spend my time with them exclusively. These people are not  _hunters_ , Tommy. They're soldiers. Soldiers of faith. Good, god-loving men."

"Was it god that strapped those infected to fucking tables?"  _That's it,_ Ellie thought. Tommy's plan seemed to be to turn the guards against Frances.

"No," Frances said with a heavy pause. " _God_  was  _strapped_  to those tables."

"What?"

"Stupid man," said one of the guards who had checked his unconscious friend. "They are not  _infected_ , you ignorant piece of shit. The gods are those who live forever. They find their nature in the spores, in the fungus…"

"The fungus is everlasting," chimed in another from behind Frances. "Life everlasting given to us by the Lord, and the spores... a Gift…"

 _The sick fuckers._ The thought made Ellie angry by itself; she wanted to go out there and shoot them all in the head.

"Why don't you all go out there and get yourself bitten then? Make yourself into one of them damn gods and let me go."

Frances laughed, but the others did not. "That's called suicide, Tommy. Christians don't hang themselves from roofs to be with their god when they have their whole lives ahead of them, do they? If we are bitten, so be it, that is our fate, but we don't make it easy. We live as god wants us too. The spores – the Gifts, we call it – are instruments of Their love."

Tommy didn't say anything; he was completely quiet. Frances waited for him to speak, and he did not.  _There's no way in fuck he believes this shit,_ Ellie thought.  _There's no way any of them do, and still…_

"Nothing to say? Ah, don't worry 'bout it, Tommy. You were a good friend to me when I was in the camp. Maria was too. Hers was a great loss.  _People_  did that, Tommy. Nobody else. People shot Maria in the face. Now come on. You've been a good friend. This won't be bad for you. I've told my friends all about you. They'd love to have you, for a bit of food."

Ellie didn't like the sound of it when he said it. The man's voice was too kind. Ellie didn't like it at all. He reminded her of David; in the way he carried himself, in the way he passed himself off as a man of faith. She didn't like him when she saw him, and she hated him when she saw them march Tommy off, his hand badly wounded. Her head fell onto Joel's shoulder. Joel didn't say anything.

* * *

 **Afterword:** Next update tomorrow! Get  _excited_ , guys. Get  _very, very_ excited. Depending on how reviews for the next few chapters go, I might start to draw a close to the story.  _The Last of Them_  might finish at chapter ten, but I can easily picture it lasting a lot longer. To be honest, it's all about how you guys are feeling. If you're just as enthusiastic about it as you once were, then I've got the motivation to keep going. Let me know in a review! They make me happy. When I get an email telling me I have a new review my heart just flutters :')


	7. Chapter 7

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** Okay, so here we are. Chapter seven. Not much to say about this one; just read it for yourself. The one day gap between the last chapter and this one is a one-time thing, friends. We're back to the three to five day waits between chapters now. ;) Remember to review (don't read the reviews before you read the chapter;  _spoilers_ )

* * *

**JOEL IV**

* * *

"Shit, Joel," Ellie said. "Fucking  _shit_. Tommy, what'll they do with him?"

"I don't know, Ellie," he said, trying to keep his voice strong.  _I'm not going to lose my brother to them_ , he thought.  _But I've got to be smart about this. Tommy would want me to be smart._ Joel knew nothing about this Frances character, though he knew that he had been a doctor once. "Tommy knew that his religion was strange," Joel said. "He told me. Said that he was trying to recruit people from Jackson. None of 'em wanted anythin' to do with it, they said."

"So how the hell does he have a militia?"

Joel shrugged and looked out the window. There were still guards posted outside, though they were heavier now – more, and they were turning.  _I knew this was a trap._ "The note; the signs telling us where to go, and the guards under orders to not see us. It was too easy. They were tryna' lure us in here. They must've known we'd come back for one of the damn trucks."

"They planned it all?"

"Seems that way."

"What're we gonna do?"

"I'm gonna put a bullet in his skull if he touches Tommy," Joel said, fingers lightly brushing against his watch. Joel had rescued Ellie from the Fireflies and gone in with guns ringing in every direction, but this group was a different kind of enemy. Tommy's life was not in any immediate risk right now, where Ellie's had been – it had been a race to find her, to safe her from those doctors. He remembered shooting all of them; one had tried to cut him with a scalpel but he had gone down all the same. If Frances feared for his men's life, Tommy was a hostage. Maybe he was a hostage right now. But for what? His eyes found their way to Ellie.  _Who would you pick, Joel?_ He hated the thought, he hated that question. He considered running with Ellie; they'd managed this far, why drag them both into something new?

"He's your brother," she said, as if answering the questions in his mind, almost delicately. "It's him or them."

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, you're right."

"Where will they have taken him?"

"I don't know," he said. "There must be a map in here somewhere, somewhere big, where they eat or something."

Ellie and Joel began to look around the walls; they were mostly covered in buttons and lights that had been dark for a long time, though there were instructions too. Warnings, indicators, message signs. Underneath a timetable on a bulletin board he found what they were looking for, held in place by flat-headed thumbtacks. The blueprints were old and faded, but he could still make them out. It had been a long time since he had read industrial blueprints; maps were easier to use – and more plentiful to boot – but for old places like this, blueprints would suffice. "I'm surprised I can still read these," he said.

"So many lines," Ellie said.

He squinted at it, tracing the route they came with his finger. It folded out once, and he had to unfold it to follow it back down.  _There_ , he thought, pointing.  _It must be there. It's the biggest empty room._

Ellie was elsewhere, reading some of the instructions on the walls. "What's…  _excrement_?" she asked.

"Shit."

"Scatology?"

"The study of shit."

"Gross. I didn't think I could like this place any less."

"I think I found it," Joel said.

"How far?"

"Down the corridor, the… first left," he said, tracing his finger down the route they would have to take. "I'd say there'll have to be some sentries posted along the way. There can't not be," he said. "God damn it!" he almost shouted, throwing the blueprints at the wall.  _Fucking hell, Tommy._ He was angry, though he didn't know who at.

He leaned against the controls in the middle of the room and put his head in his hands, and then he felt her give him a hug. He moved his arms and saw her, all kind and sweet, trying to keep his calm, and he gave her a hug too.

"We're gonna get him back," she said, stepping back a little. "You know we are. We always do. We keep going."

He nodded. "I know." He let her go and tried to calm himself again. "We're only going to get one shot at this, Ellie. You gotta listen to me carefully."

* * *

He left the control room without Ellie or his gun and started to make his way down the route he memorised from the faded blueprints. Joel couldn't be sure that the way he was going was the right route, but that didn't matter – any guards he encountered along the way would surely take him to Frances if he asked.  _Or they'll shoot me in the head and take my body to him._ He had seen their guns through the slants in the cabinet, and he had seen the revolver that Ora had used to shoot Tommy in the hand with.  _If he's willing to shoot him in the hand and risk hitting him in the chest…_  Joel knew he had to hurry.

Tommy hadn't expressed any overt disliking of Ora, though he was aware of the tension that had existed between the settlers of Jackson and Frances.  _Ora was right in one thing he said,_ Joel thought.  _People are the real bastards of this world…_

Joel remembered what Ish had said what seemed like years before.  _"This is a predatory world, and it's slowly eating itself alive."_  Joel thought of Sarah and the man that had shot her. Tommy had taken him down, but what Joel would have given for him to be alive again. He had tumbled with that rage in his mind for a long time; before he had met Ellie sometimes the anger kept sleep at bay. The anger didn't stop Joel sleeping anymore. It was fear that did it now.

That fear was what made him want to turn back, to take Ellie and run, and what made him walk around the corner, raise his hands, and let them put a gun to his back and make him lead them. There were two of them, plain-faced and dull-looking men, who took him, nervously. They made him walk ahead of them, guns pressed hard against his back. A gun against someone's back was a bad strategy, Joel knew.  _I could disarm the pair of 'em and break their necks without them getting a shot in me, fucking lunatics._

When they reached the room – just the one that Joel had expected – they marched him down the middle of two bloody long tables. They were full to bursting with people, some people sat behind two others to still have access to food. They murmured and talked away, drinking all the same – Joel wondered if wine was still God's drink, or if that was whiskey now. At the head table he saw him – Frances with his giant fedora, Tommy on his left side. The men in the hall began to quieten, until he was halfway to Ora, when their quiet was as silent as the dead.

"The prodigal brother returns," said the doctor, standing. He raised his hands. "It has been a while, my brother. Come, join us. I don't think Ben will object to giving you his chair. Ben?" he said, looking down at the man on his right. Wordlessly the man scurried away, and the guards took Joel to his seat, which he stood behind. "Sit, please. Don't stand on my account," he said, laughing. Cautiously, Joel sat.

Tommy sat on the other side of Ora; his eyes a wildly mixed cluster of feelings – there was annoyance, yes, probably that Joel had been caught. There was confusion –  _where is Ellie?_ But there was relief in there, too; the light of hope returning to his losing eyes.  _Did he think I was gonna leave him?_

"Have something to eat, won't you? And where's that little girl of yours?" he said, coolly.  _There's nothing cool about you, sick fuck. Say her name again and I'll rip your tongue out and make you swallow it._

Joel looked down at the table, feigning sadness and grief. He knew the face well. "She's buried on top of the hill just east of here."

"Oh, Joel," he said with no expression, shovelling a forkful of some meat into his mouth; his lips looked like worms, writhing as he ate. "How many feet down?"

 _He knows I'm lying._ "Seven."

"The gods are cruel sometimes. We do what we can, yes. Did she pass quietly?"

"She did."

"And the gods are kind too. I expect you don't want to talk about it," he said, rubbing some sauce from the worms with the back of his hand and wiping it away with a cloth.

"I don't want to talk about anything. I want my brother back."

"Let's finish with our food first. You must eat too, or the gods'll be upset."

"Cut the holy act," Joel said loudly. The room, that had just began to rise in noise again, seemed to shrink. Eyes turned and watched Joel; zealot eyes, fanatic eyes. He turned back and saw Tommy; there was no fantasy there, only a warning to be careful.  _They are dangerous, Joel. Be careful with what you say._  "And I've already eaten."

"Oh, a shame. Ah well," he said. "Wine?" He took a swig from his own glass. "It's not the best, but these days it seems to me that all wine seems poor… since we found a one of our brothers in faith drowned in it. Someone killed him, we never found out whom. That wine was poor too, and his corpse didn't improve it."

Tommy was horrified. "You  _drank_ the wine?"

"It's an awful thing to find one of your brothers dead," he said with a sly smile that Joel did not like. "You would need of a drink too."

"Being dead is better than being one of them." Joel asked.  _I want to know what he believes. I want a way out of this._ Tommy seemed to know what Joel was thinking, as he didn't offer up any strained looks.  _He really is my brother_ , he thought. Joel thought back to older times, where they'd fight as kids. Joel was nine when Tommy was born, maybe eight. He didn't remember. He remembered his grandmother feeling worried that Joel would be jealous of the new baby's attention, and so he took him into Houston and bought him a football jersey.

"I don't think that's true, Joel. No doubt they're a very dull folk," he continued, cutting into a slice of poor But our  _gods_ , no. They are alive, and bright with want. Pure creatures. It's a rare thing, a person that walks and does not lie."

"I won't disagree with that," Joel said. "It's time we went, Frances."

"Maybe you're right. Tommy, do you also want to leave the wonderful world we have here?"

"Yeah," he said gruffly. "I do."

"Disappointing," he said. His mouth frowned but the sadness did not reach his eyes. "I must let you out of my hands then, but come with me first – there's something I'd like to show you. There's something I'd like to show you first, both of you," he said, and got to his feet. When he did, the entire hall's chairs screeched out, singing, and they rose too. He smiled. "Sit down. Eat, brothers. The Gift within," he said, a hand pressed to his chest. They chorused back "The Gift within" and replicated the gesture, and then as Ora turned to leave, they slowly sat. A few guards followed, though it was more protocol than anything – they seemed unwilling to leave him.  _What is he to them? A priest? A prophet?_

_A liar._

Frances took them down a corridor that led out of the hall through the back way, and then down a few flights of stairs. There was a cold chill in the air, Joel noticed, and he kept in stride with Tommy all the way. Joel wondered what would come next. He wondered if he could convince Frances to give him one of the trucks. He remembered Ellie. She would be waiting for him…  _This better be quick_ , he thought.

They were in the sewers again, Joel knew. Sometimes he swore he heard something following behind them in the dark, but he looked back and there was nothing but dancing shadows cast by weak lights on the walls. It was the smell of the place that got to Joel; it was the foulest thing about it.  _The reek of old shit. The sewers are the only thing to stink of shit in here_ , he thought, watching Ora, who was talking away. Tommy had asked him a question to keep the silence away. There was something threatening about the silence.

"… I gave being a doctor up, Tommy, but never did I give up being a healer. I'm a different sort of healer than I was a doctor, you see. I heal people with faith. These people were damaged when they came to me. I offered them shelter, and shed some light on the world's situation."

"The world's predatory," Joel quoted, "and it's slowly eating itself alive."

"That sounds about right," Ora agreed. Joel could see his head nodding.  _This man hides himself in a sort of light too. He's a sick brute hiding himself with religion._ Joel had thought hard about this godly man, and he'd come to the same decision he always did about religion – that it was just a method of control. Religion had lost its appeal in this new world, at first people prayed and they were ignored. The gods don't have any say in a world where cannibalism is as common as it is immoral.

There was a dripping far off, and soon Joel knew they were in a similar place to where they'd been before. He squinted in the poor light to try and discern any landmarks, but there were none to be seen. They kept following. On and on. Where Frances was ahead of them, the guards were behind. Once, one had prodded Joel's back with his gun.

"Nuh-uh," Ora's voice came from ahead. He had turned and was facing them. "If you're going to threaten someone with a gun, Joseph, it's important you don't hold it against their back. You'll lose the use of your arm like that, and I'm afraid my days as a surgeon are long by. Keep back a little. These people aren't our prisoners. They're distinguished guests."

 _My ass we are_ , Joel thought. He had left his backpack with Ellie, and his gun too. He hoped she hadn't been found. Although he had a lot of faith she could take care of herself, she  _was_ just a girl…  _There's that word again. Faith._ Joel had more than faith in Ellie.  _Faith_ is where you have a belief, and no evidence. He had evidence. Ellie was as strong as they came; Ellie was titanium packaged in a teenage girl. Ellie was strength, no matter her age.  _I've got more than faith._

"We're getting tired of this, Frances," Tommy said after a long silence. Silence and walking.

"Just a little further."

"The preachy shit is getting old, Frances. We had it back in town and bobody bought into it. I don't know why  _they_ do," he said, jabbing a finger backwards towards the guard. The butt of a gun slammed hard into the back of Tommy's head and he fell, though not knocked out.

"Stop," said Frances. "Has he offended you?" he said to the guard. Joel had made to beat the guard, but the way Frances had approached the situation was different. He sounded  _angry_ at the man. "It is not your place, Joseph, to beat, to hurt. It is not our place."  _That must be why you carry guns._ "Tommy can wound the pride in your heart no more than a lunatic in a cell can make the sun fall from the sky by scribbling 'darkness' on the wall with chalk. We can show them the light, but we cannot lead them out of the dark."

The man, Joseph, seemed appeased. He nodded slowly, and the guard to his side placed a hand on his shoulder. "The Gift within," the guard said, and Joseph echoed it back.

"My good brothers," Frances said, and they walked on.

Joel knew then it was his voice that made Frances dangerous. He helped Tommy to his feet and they marched on. Joseph had his rifle lowered slightly the rest of the day, as if at rest.  _He trusts Frances completely. They all do._ Joel wondered if they could somehow coerce Frances to give them a truck, and then the others would have no choice but to relinquish it to them. He wondered if he could twist it; if this could be used.  _Think about this later, when you've got Ellie back._

He heard the noises behind him again and he focused his hearing, but it was just the steady dripping of water leaking from the surface. They moved on, and they reached their destination. Tommy and Joel stood side by side in front of a door, beside which Frances was. "Ah, here we are." The door was unremarkable; old and rusted with a great padlock on it. He pushed a key into the padlock and clicked it open, pushing the door open. The room was completely black, he could see nothing inside.  _I'm not going in there._

"Joel, before we continue, I have a few questions. Come here, if you will," he said, and took him away from Tommy. Tommy stood by the door, listening, just out of Joel's sight, though he'd hear him if there were any problems.

"I want this done, Frances. No more damn games. Let us go."

"You're out of my hands as soon as this is over, Joel. I have a quick question." Joel said nothing, staring at the man. His eyes were colourless, he noticed now, like grey chips of ice. The doctor, the self-titled healer, the man called Frances, licked his wormy lips and took a few steps back from Joel. His voice was almost a whisper, and it made Joel have to lean in to hear properly. "Where is she, Joel? Is she in the building?"

Joel drew back a little. "She's none of your goddamn business."

"So she  _is_  in the building. Were you in the control room when I took Tommy? You must have been. My boys said that's where you came from."

"Joel!" he heard Tommy, from inside the room. He looked behind him; the guards were gone, and Tommy was too. Without so much as a second glance at Frances, Joel ran into the room to be with his brother, and then the hard clang of metal on metal screamed out from behind him, and the door clicked shut, and the door was locked. The lights came on, weak but enough to see. The room was big, and Tommy was there, six feet away from Joel. There was a door just behind him, though it was locked too. Joel and Tommy were separated; Joel stood in a smaller section of the room, blocked off by a large, grated cage that spanned from one side of the wall to the other. Even if he had tried, he couldn't squeeze through the bars to get to his brother.  _This is a place for someone to watch_ , he thought.  _To watch something._

"They pointed a gun at your head, Joel," he said weakly. "They said I was to follow them through the door quietly. Fuck, Joel," he said, looking around. There was one other door, ahead of Tommy, to Joel's left. "Joel, what's going on? Joel?" He walked towards Joel slowly, nervously; he was terrified. Joel put a hand on the bars and Tommy took it. "Joel" he kept saying, eyes looking around the room. There was a stink in the air, but not of shit anymore – it was a greener smell; the smell of wet grass, no, of moss… of fungus.

"Tommy," Joel said. "Stand back. Get away from that door," he said. Joel tried hard to kick at the metal cage, but all it did was rattle and hurt Joel's foot. There was a padlock and thick chains around the cage and he tried to fumble it and he looked for a lockpick but he didn't have one. Behind Joel, a slit on the door slid open and grey eyes peered out at them, looking sad.

"I am showing you the light, Joel."

"You fucking bastard!" he shouted. "You said this was the end. I will kill you."

"It is the end. You are no longer in my hands. You're in your own hands, and Tommy…" the door slowly creaked open, a belly of darkness, and then a shape, and a hiss. "… well, he'll be in the jaws of a higher power soon. They'll make him better than us, Joel. You'll see."

Joel began to feel hot and his eyes stung with hot tears and inside his stomach was dropping over and over again and his heart choked him and all the while Tommy kept saying his name and there was nothing he could do. The door from behind him slit shut. Joel began to scream for Frances, for Tommy… for his little brother. And then the shape came out, and it ran at Tommy, and Tommy swung a fist at him. It stumbled back, and it came again. It was screaming for him, wearing white robes…  _They dressed it up_ was all he could think,  _the fucks, the fucks… Tommy…_

And then it fell onto Tommy. As Joel screamed for his brother, Tommy screamed in agony. He kept punching at it with his free hand, but there was blood all over his shirt, his jeans… it sprayed his face. Tommy stumbled towards the cage, trying to run… it reached him again and it punched its teeth into Tommy's neck, and the spray of blood on its face was sharp and quick. Joel grabbed its head and slammed it into the bars, over and over until he heard the  _crack_ and saw its head cave inwards. It fell onto the floor, a dead heap…  _Tommy._ Tommy fell onto the floor too, screaming and crying. Blood and tears rolled together and they became on, a runny red on his face, on everywhere.  _No, Tommy… my little bro… Tommy…_

"Tommy, Tommy! Stay with me. Come on over here, come on, Tommy," he pleaded. Tommy was crying hard but he dragged himself across the floor and to Joel, leaning his back on the bars of the cage. Joel wrapped his arms around Tommy and he held them. He wanted to hold him there, but there was too much blood... Joel held him tight and still he felt him slipping away, like he had with Sarah... Tommy's eyes were lulling back in his head, his head twitching and hitting against the bars. "Stop Tommy, you're gonna hurt yourself … you're gonna hurt yourself little brother…"

_I'll kill the bastard. I'll fucking kill him. I'll kill him._

"No," Tommy was saying. "Joel, Joel…"

"Just close your eyes, Tommy."

Tommy's head rolled back again and Joel saw the deep gauge in his neck and the slashes where its nails had torn and ripped at him. "Shit," Joel said. Tommy was still crying, blood in his blonde hair. Joel ran his hands through it and hugged his brother tight.

"Don't make me go… don't let me go... don't make me turn into one of them…"

"Don't go then," Joel said. "Stay with me. Stay with me." In his arms Joel felt his little brother leave him, just like his daughter once had.  _Tommy no, Tommy come back.._.

Joel held him for a long time, crying silently. Slowly he wrapped his arms around Tommy's neck and then pulled, sobbing and howling as he did it. "You won't turn into one of them, little brother," he said. "I won't let you."


	8. Chapter 8

**Authors' Note:** And here we go again. It's been a little while since the last chapter, I know, but I had to come to terms with what went down. That's been in the planning for a while now; to me, Tommy's death is a huge changing point for different characters. This chapter has the challenge of showing how things have changed, and how quickly. Ellie will be changed because of this, and Joel will be too. Maybe they'll be irreparably broken, maybe they'll slowly come to terms with things, maybe they won't last until the end of the story because of where they're headed. Either way, things are starting to become a lot more intense. Make sure to leave a review letting me know what you think. Every single time I get a review I go back and write a little more (and I write in giant blocks, two or three thousand words at a time), so you'll understand why they help. What do you think of the way things are going?  **Also** , how do you feel about Tommy dying?

* * *

**ELLIE IV**

* * *

Ellie didn't know how long she'd been wandering the tunnels. Each tunnel felt like the next, they rolled into one another. Maybe she'd been going in circles, she wasn't sure. If she had had Joel's mind, she might have wondered if she was going to die down here. Luckily, no such thought had crossed her mind. There were a few guards here and there, and the man with the fedora had passed, his eyes elsewhere. His eyes were hard, Ellie knew the look – it was the look Joel wore often, when he was thinking.

"Go back to the control room," he had said walking past, his voice trailing and echoing up the corridor, his voice quiet. "The girl might be there. Arm some more brothers – Crowley and Allis, yes. They'll do. Bring all of the equipment you can. I don't mean for her to escape alive."

He had gone silent then, only the echoes of their footsteps continued to reach her ears. She knew they were talking about her, and it made her worry for Joel.  _What've they done with him?_  She doubted he was dead… there was something about Joel and Tommy that made them invincible, some thick armour they had against attacks. Anything that the world had thrown at Joel, at Ellie, even at Tommy, had been defeated. Death had knocked on Joel's door, and he had told them to get to fuck.  _But maybe I'm wrong. I've been wrong about people before…_

She'd been wrong about navigation before too… how Joel had managed to trek them across a landscape scorched with infected she did not know. He was a good man, and Tommy was too. She wondered a little about  _their_ parents as her feet clicked off the wet ground below, the fronts of them shining with muddy water from below, though the mud was probably shit.  _I'll ask them about their parents when this is done. When we're out in the light again_. Shadows danced erratically back and forth, sometimes they followed Ellie and sometimes they lagged behind.  _They're probably as fucking lost as me_ , she thought. The lights were weak, pale yellow and oranges. Some didn't work at all, some flickered out for seconds. She had Joel's 9mm in her hand, though she wasn't familiar with it, and she didn't know if she'd be much use with it in a fight. Hopefully, it wouldn't come to that. And why would it?  _I've avoided them so far._

She had followed the man in the fedora, Joel, Tommy and the guards for a while down the corridors. It hadn't been difficult, though a few times Joel had turned, hearing noises behind her.  _Just keep going Joel_ , she kept thinking.  _If you see me the guards'll know, and then they'll shoot me in the damn head._ Soon enough, however, she lost them. She'd been following the route she thought Ora had come back from for ten minutes or so now.  _They can't be too far ahead._ The tunnels reeked of old shit, and something else too, something damp. Ellie slid out the clip for the third time and made sure it was full, and then pushed it back up until it clicked into place. She kept her hands wrapped tightly around the grip and trained straight ahead, though there was little her eyes could pick up in the darkness.

It was around then that she heard the screaming. "Joel," she muttered, and bound off down the corridor, into the dark, though it was much lighter than it seemed. Ellie traced the sound – a deep, wet crying – to a locked door, and she kicked at it once before she said anything.

"Let me fucking out of here!" she heard Joel say from the inside. She looked around the door; there was a big keyhole about the size of her fist, and there was a slit. She grabbed at the rusted handle, brown and flaky, and pulled hard. It slid, with some initial resistance, and light seemed to streak  _out_ of the room. Whatever was happening, Joel was well lit. She peered into the room.  _No, no, no…_

Her eyes stuck on the bodies. First the one she did not know, and then… and then…

Joel still wasn't looking at her. His arms were stuck through bars, contorted around Tommy's body. He was rocking back and forth.

"Tommy… come on, little brother… don't do this to me Tommy… we were gonna get us out of here. Come on… Tommy, come on – no – no – oh, my god… please…"

"Joel…"

His head snapped towards her, but for a minute she wasn't sure if it was Joel. It was his voice, barely, but his face seemed old, haggard, savaged by grief, red and puffy and wet. She knew the look well; it was her face after her mom; after Riley. His eyes were bloodshot and sore, and full of a pain that made Ellie well-up and cry too. A real cry. She pressed her hands against the door and her cheeks squeezed themselves together and the tears ran down them and she wanted to know what happened.

_Tommy. Tommy. Tommy._

_What happened – oh, shit – Joel? Joel!_

_Riley. Tess. Sam… Tommy? No, not Tommy._

She wanted to go in there and she wanted to hug Joel and tell him it was going to be alright but she couldn't because he was in a locked room. She kicked the door hard and she hurt her foot. "Joel," she said, "Joel I can't get in I don't have a key," she said, weakly.  _A key._

It was then Ellie realised that she did have a key. She took the rucksack off her back and reached in deep; Joel kept a lot of things in this bag, but there was only one she needed, and she couldn't find it.  _No, no. I can't have lost it. I don't lose things._ And then she heard them jingling, and she felt the rough, rusted edge of the ring. She pulled it out from underneath everything else and fumbled with them.  _Joel still hasn't said anything. He's gonna be okay, Ellie, he's gonna be –_

"I'm tellin' you I heard something, woman," said a man's voice from down the hall. She heard the footsteps then too.

 _Fuck, no._ She took a hold of the gun and sprinted around the corner, barely two metres away. She listened a little while longer and their voices travelled to her…

"It sounded like the damn girl."

"How do you know what she sounds like?"

"I heard 'em in the truck. Doc gave me reign out of the outside when they were meant to be comin' in. He trusts me."

"Shut up, you idiot," said a woman, almost a hiss. "We didn't know  _when_ they were coming back. All Doc said is that they was goin' to."

"That's because They told 'im," he said. "They told him that they was gonna come back, and they did – and he picked me specifically. He  _trusts_ me."

Ellie moved a little bit, too loudly, and they hushed.  _Shit, they've found me._ "Well, well, well…" said the woman's voice. "What've we got here?"

Ellie took a deep breath.  _They won't take me. Not like they got him._ And then she felt angry. _These are the fuckers that killed Tommy. The FUCKERS._

Ellie swung herself, gun first, around the corner, and unloaded an entire clip into them. Each shudder of the gun left her hands shaking at the wound in her arm aching with pain. The hunters didn't have time to reach for their guns, and they didn't see her until they were sinking to the floor beside Joel's backpack, spraying it with drops of blood. The woman, she saw, even after six bullets in her chest, was still alive – reaching weakly for the gun she had dropped on the way to the floor. Ellie ran over to her and took out her switchblade, flicking it up, and then plunged it swiftly into her neck, blood spraying her face a little. She took the revolver and walked back over to the bag, reaching in for the keys and tugging them out. Her eyes kept looking back over to the bodies she'd left and they made her think of the others again.

"Ellie? ELLIE?!" Joel shouted from the room, and then his red eyes were at the slit.

"I'm okay," she said. "Guards."

 _Riley. Tess. Sam. Tommy. And now there's two more,_ she reflected, looking through the keys for one that seemed to match the lock.

"The keys," he said. All the strength had left his voice, and it made Ellie want to cry more, but she wouldn't. Not while those fuckers were still out there. There were more of them. The ones that did this.

"Hurry, Ellie. More of them will be comin'."

She had almost given up hope when a key slid in and gave way. The bolt sealing the door flicked open and she pulled the door open hard. Joel stumbled out of the room, and so too did a smell. A reek she tried not to acknowledge; if Joel was detecting it, it wasn't on his mind. She wandered into the room a little, and then she felt his hands on her shoulder. Through her shirt, she could still feel the heat they gave off. She wondered how cold Tommy's body was. Joel turned her around.

"You don't need to see this, Ellie, come on."

"What about –"

"I gotta get you out of here. They'll come back."

"They won't come back, Joel. They were either here to sit by you until you fucking starved, or they were here to shoot you." She looked over at Tommy again, her stomach rigid with guilt, though she kept it to herself. She wanted to cry again, and she did. Joel wrapped his hands around her.

"Come on, we've gotta go… we've gotta go…"

"It was him, Joel? The one with the fucking hat?"

Joel tensed a little at that, but still he kept his armed around her. Tight, as if he didn't want her to go anywhere… like he was afraid she too would slip away, like Tommy had.

"Yeah, baby girl," he said quietly. He was crying again, and she was too. "It was."

"He walked fucking past me, Joel. I should have shot him in the fucking head and ended all this. There were – there were only three… I could have got them… they… I…"

"This isn't your fault, Ellie," he said, moving back a little, resting his hands on her shoulders. "This isn't… this isn't your fight."

"It's our fight, Joel. They –" though her hand hovered and her finger pointed inside that room, beyond the cage, she couldn't say it aloud. She looked at the floor and blinked hard, tears falling to the floor. She looked up at Joel. "I want him to die, Joel."

His eyes met hers and they stayed there for what felt like eternity. His were the first to blink and tears fell out of them too. He looked at her hard, and she wondered what he was thinking. She wondered if he was sickened, or if he was angry, or if she was a monster.  _I'm not._

Joel took a few steps back and looked down at the bodies on the floor. The woman's eyes were still open, though the man had fallen face-down and she couldn't see his face. The thin layer of dust across the floor glistened with the spray of blood she had let loose when Elie stuck her blade into the side of the woman's throat. They would have killed her otherwise, and she had Joel to think about.  _I've got to protect him too._

"I know, baby girl," he said, reaching down and picking up his backpack. Joel bit his lip hard and looked at Ellie. "But I won't drag you along on my vendetta."

"I want to see him dead," she said, as if the point had not been clear.

"It isn't your fight –"

"The hell it isn't!" she said, taking a step towards him. She felt guilt churn inside her again.  _You're shouting at him. He just lost his brother, Ellie._ "We're in this  _together_ ," she said, quieter. "You're not alone."

He sighed deeply and wiped some of the sweat and tears away from his face, though there was blood drying on his hands and it streaked and smudged it. "I'm not willin' to put you in that kind of danger," he said and she scowled. "This man is  _dangerous_ –"

" _David_  was dangerous, Joel. Do you remember what happened when you  _found me_?" she said, her voice breaking and trailing off near the end. Ellie could feel her bottom lip shaking but she couldn't stop it. Her hands were twitching too. "This world is shit, Joel. We can't do anything about that, but we can make sure the sick fuck that did that is put down and I am going to be a  _part of that._  This isn't for you or for me, it's for  _Tommy._  I will be okay."

Joel looked over at Tommy once more and then dropped his gaze to the old broken watch on his wrist, rubbing his fingers over it slightly. "We need to get out of here. We have to – how did you get through the hall without everyone seeing you?"

"Nobody was looking I guess," Ellie replied, shrugging. "I walked up the side, there were columns and tables. I crouched behind them, followed you out the back door. I was following you the whole way."

"I heard something."

"It was me."

He tried to smile a little but it came out as a sort of grimace.

Ellie wanted to ask what they were going to do with Tommy's body, but there was nothing they could do with it. They couldn't take it with them, it would have to stay where it was. Ellie thought a little of all the other bodies that risen again and she wondered then if Tommy's would. Her eyes wandered over a bit to Tommy the other body, its face almost like pale green wax.

"He won't turn," Joel said, and that was the end of it.

They walked in silence for a while back down the routes Ellie remembered, though Joel didn't need much guiding. As always he walked in front, holding the revolver she'd taken from the woman. The man's gun, though she took it too, was empty of bullets. They'd locked the door and then taken the keys back, jamming them into the bag. Joel had the bag now, though Ellie didn't mind. It was the last thing on her mind, but had she thought about it, she would have been pleased. She'd left her own backpack in the cabin and, since then, her load had felt much lighter. She didn't mind carrying the load for Joel, but he took it without a word. She wondered how long it took Joel to deal with his daughter's death, how long it took him to start living again.

"Was Tommy with you when this all happened?"

"Hm? Oh, yeah. Yeah he was."

"And Sarah?"

A pause. "Yeah."

"Why did you split up?"

"Hrm."

"Too much?"

"Yeah."

That old silence again as they walked. The lights were flickering lower, dimming. It seemed they valued the little resources they likely had, so they only turned the lights on when they had to, Ellie thought.  _Fuel was hard enough to come by when we were in that damn car._ She wondered how much it used for all of these cars… for the generator.

"How do you think they got all this fuel?"

"Tommy mentioned they had a lot. Maybe – maybe the bastard was liftin' it and bringin' it back here. Tommy wouldn'ta noticed a few barrels here and there. Tommy was the trustin' one. He saw the best in people. He was always  _looking for the light_."

 _He knew him_ , Ellie remembered suddenly.  _He knew him and he killed him. He was friends with him._

"That's how he ended up with Marlene?"

Joel's head dropped and it seemed like all the weight of the world fell upon him. His shoulders tensed and his legs buckled and he stumbled away and fell down at the wall. He pressed a thumb against one temple and spread across his eyes. His other hand held his wrist, over his watch. Both hands were trembling. Ellie moved straight down and placed a hand around his back, nuzzling in with his head.

Ellie had thought of grief, but she had imaged Joel's differently. She had imagined an unrelenting rage, where Joel was no longer Joel. Joel became a being of immense hatred and anger and wrath. She imagined him carving a path through waves of people. She imagined something different, and it prodded at her still. A sense that once there was a well of rage, and now it was dried up.

" _You'd just come after her."_

They heard the footsteps before they heard their voices. They were hard and heavy footsteps – there were a lot of them. Joel heard them too and his head snapped up, listening. He got to his feet. "Come on, Ellie, we've gotta go," he said, and he began to walk backwards. He wiped his face again, smearing more blood across it.

"It sounds like there's a lot of them, Joel."

"Can't tell because of the echoes. Damn footsteps bounce back and forth. Come on."

They started running back the way they came until they found their way into a small room – Joel kicked at the door, though it was locked, and he kicked harder until the lock broke; there were still, noiseless tanks inside that Ellie doubted held anything, though the smell was unbearable. There were six tanks in the room – two rows of three each, and they went to the back, hiding behind the farthermost tank in the left hand side corner away from the door. They could hear the footsteps hurrying closer, moving on.

"… she'll be trying to get him out …"

"… little bitch don't have a key, damn it, she'll die there …"

"… why does Doc want her dead so bad …"

"… dangerous, he said. She's a danger to us all…"

In her chest Ellie bubbled with anger. Maybe she was being filled with the rage that had depleted in Joel. She wanted them dead, but that would have to wait. They had a revolver and a gun with no bullets. She hadn't even checked how many bullets she had in the gun –

She heard the click and looked, Joel was – as if reading her mind – checking the bullets. He stared at the chamber for a moment and then slotted them back in, spinning them.  _Four,_ he mouthed. The footsteps got closer and louder, blocking out all noises from anywhere else, and then they ran past, barely even looking at them… and then Joel and Ellie heard a sort of hissing, and their heads turned to behind them. Nothing. Behind them was only darkness. Joel's hand moved up and clicked on his torch, and there was a body, eyes wild with want, banging and clawing at the glass container that held it.

Ellie's heart began to race and she looked around the rest of them; Joel directed the light around and saw they were everywhere… three, four, five of them, all in plastic or glass cages. "They've got  _air holes_ , Joel," she said, too loudly. All of them began to scream in their cages. Runners, the lot of them. The footsteps came back into their hearing.

"Ellie, this way," she heard, and Joel was off. His light was on a pair of ladders, though she couldn't see where they led to. She went up first and he followed; she could feel his hands always just behind her feet. She moved from rung to rung as fast as she could and then crawled back; the ladder led to a metal platform, with two wooden boxes that only barely just hid them. Just at the right time –

"… I heard noises from the damn god-vaults, I swear it…"

"Sometimes They talk," said a woman. "Let us be sure."

There were heels on the ground first, high. There were at least four of them, maybe five, Ellie couldn't be sure. Joel had his eyes closed, listening so carefully.

"My lords," said the woman, "we did not mean to disturb you." The infected in their cages hissed and Ellie could hear them pawing at their prisons.  _Does she really think they can hear her?_ "We must search the area. People who wish  _harm_ on you may be in here, conspiring…" she said as though she could never understand why.

The footsteps moved around the room slowly, spreading out and checking behind each of the containers.

"There's nothing here, Valerie."

Ellie could almost feel the woman's fanatical eyes tracing over the room.  _Please don't see the ladders. Please don't see the ladders._

"The ladders. Check them."

"Valerie, if there were someone –"

"Now."

Joel looked at the revolver in his hand and then listened for the footsteps. Slowly, they were making their way towards them. Joel looked at Ellie.  _Trust me,_  he mimed, and handed Ellie the revolver.

"Don't shoot me," he said, raising his hands in submission.

"Ah," said the woman. " _Don't check the ladders_ , he says." The woman cackled, her voice was high and her laugh was deranged. "Where's the girl?"

"Girl?"

A round went off, lighting the room. Joel flinched but she hadn't fired at him, otherwise he'd have fallen down beside her.  _Dea – no. Don't. Don't._

"No, no, no," the woman said. "I want an answer.  _Where is the girl?_ "

Joel lowered his hands again. The box came up to his stomach. He held out his right hand flat and she placed the revolver in it.  _This is fucking nuts, Joel. Please don't,_  she wanted to say, but she was rooted. And then he slammed his hand up and fired the gun – one, two, three, four. But it wasn't bodies she heard collapsing into heaps on the floor, no; it was the high, shattering of grass, and the screams of the infected unleashed from their cages. Joel crouched back down beside her; one tried to shoot at Joel and missed.

She heard the first hunter go down screaming, the wet crunch of teeth on flesh. Ellie closed her eyes and she could still hear it, over and over… Slowly the hunters emptied their rounds into them. Ellie looked out and Joel peeped up.

"There's only one left – an infected," Ellie said, looking down, but she noticed something else too –

"The woman's gone," Joel said and made to go down the ladders again, but he stopped. Ellie could still hear the gargling and the hissing. She looked over the edge with Joel. It was there, clawing with its hands at the ladders, unsure of them.

"At least they don't remember how to climb ladders," Ellie said, and not a moment too soon. It began a very slow ascent.

"Hrm," Joel said. He took off his backpack and started looking around inside it. Ellie looked down again. It was still coming, though its feet never touched the rungs; its arms were taking the full weight. She imagined trying to do that for a moment, and shivered. She looked around at Joel who was still reaching inside his backpack.  _He's lost his brother, Ellie. He's not going to be himself for a while._

_But how long? I need him._

_You're being selfish._

The guilt was back again.  _Riley. Tess. Sam. Tommy._ She tried to push their faces from her head but she couldn't. She just wanted them to go away. It wasn't her responsibility, none of it was. Joel had told her that it wasn't – he had said the immunity wasn't about her anymore, there was nothing for  _her alone_ to do. So why did she still feel like she should have died?  _It should have been me, not Riley. Not Tess. Sam. Tommy._ She looked down again at the infected climbing the ladder and then she looked at Joel.

_Whether it's now, it's whether it's five years from now… I won't let him be next._

She took a deep breathed and blinked the tears down.

"Ellie?" Joel said.

Ellie smiled and took a few steps away from the ladders.

And then she ran and jumped.


	9. Chapter 9

**Author's Note:** Phew! This was written in one very long sitting. I am exhausted, and I only hope it doesn't show in the writing. I want updates to be more regular now. As for this chapter, I don't want to say much. There's a lot of  _stuff_ happening in this chapter, moving our favourite video game duo on and on and on. It was honestly difficult to write; I couldn't decide how to handle some things and some little conversations, but I went over their dialogue when I was done to make sure it still seemed in-character, and I think I retained their voices pretty well. Voices (and literally, the sound of voices) is a recurring theme (and motif) of this chapter, I think. I seem to be one for senses; sometimes light and dark are themes, and now it's voices. I'm not one for subtly, I suppose. This is a pretty long chapter, and the next will be shorter. I'll be posting it within the next twenty-four hours, I think. I want to fire them out like rapid fire for a little while now that there's a lot more competition from other stories! Still, the quality of the content comes first. Thanks to all of you for being such great readers, first and foremost. Please let me know what you think of the story so far in a review, and specifically this chapter. Love you guys! (PS: Follow and favourite!)

* * *

**JOEL V**

* * *

"Ellie?"

Ellie paused for a moment and then tilted her head towards Joel and smiled. Her smile once reminded Joel of Sarah, but now it was Ellie's smile – it didn't make his mind wander. Not now. He was about to try to smile back, even in the midst of it all – and then she jumped.

 _Oh, shit_ , he thought and moved over. The infected had fallen back to the floor and started to try and scramble to its feet. Ellie was away from it on the floor, though she was making no move to flee from it.  _What are you doing?!_  She was staring at the floor, where the infected would come towards her. She managed to jump, so could he. He looked at where the infected was, and then he jumped… crunching a boot hard into its skull. His ankle twisted a little and it hurt like mad; he lost his balances and almost fell to the floor. His eyes were still trained on Ellie.

"What the hell were you doing?"

She was still looking at the floor. She didn't look at him… her eyes were on the floor. The bodies of the hunters were all around the room. Joel wondered earlier where the woman had went – she had seemed the most dangerous, the most loose of the group – but that thought was far away and long gone. Ellie was the only thing in his mind now. Ellie and her maniac move.

" _Ellie_ ," he said, voice firmer. He moved towards her, his ankle in pain. It was all he could do not to limp. "What was that? You could have hurt yourself." His thoughts went to Tommy. Tommy had hurt himself. His stomach sank whenever he heard his name.

"It's all my fault," she muttered.

Her eyes brimmed with wet, big and sad. Joel wanted nothing more than to take her in his arms and tell her everything was going to be alright.  _But we don't got time for this right now. We need to keep going. That woman will bring more of them._ And yet, against his better judgment he kneeled down in front of her, ankle throbbing in protest. He put a finger under her chin and pushed it up so she faced him, though her eyes avoided his.

"Look at me, Ellie." Her eyes lulled in protest. "Look at me." She did, all baby eyes and sadness. They blinked and tears ran down her face. Joel was reminded, yet again, that despite all she'd been through, all they'd done, how far they'd went, how far they'd come… Ellie was fifteen. Ellie was still a girl, and she was struggling with her demons as much as Joel was with his. "This is not about you, baby girl. None of this was your fault." He wiped a loose strand of hair from her eyes and tucked it behind her ear. "There is a man responsible for this, Ellie. And we'll get him. Tess, the others, they weren't on you. It was just bad luck. That's what all of this is."

"I don't know how to deal with it anymore, Joel."

And then he knew what to say. Just for a moment, he saw Sarah reading from a book.  _Self-Help for Dummies, that was it._ She was mocking it while they were shopping one day, way back when… it was a lifetime ago, but Joel remembered every word. "Step one, inhale. Go on." Ellie took a deep breath. "Step two, exhale." Ellie let the air out in ragged, short breaths; punctuated by bursts of crying. "Step three, accept that it's happened."

Ellie laughed a little. "What bullshit."

Joel nodded, and he smiled. "Yeah, yeah it is. Come on, we can talk about this later. We gotta go."

For a moment more Ellie just sat there. She didn't move, the smile had disappeared and her expression was blank and unreadable; civilisation had broken under the weight of the cordyceps, but the language of teenage girls was a constant unknowable to Joel. He doubted even Ellie understood what she was going through underneath, but she would pull through. She had to.  _For me._ After what felt like forever, she nodded, and she got to her feet.

"Search the bodies," he said. "And check their guns for ammo."

She nodded and they set about it.

* * *

They made their way back out into the sewers and found that the lights had gone out; only the faint afterglow of old light remained. Joel reckoned that the woman must have returned to Ora with news of their escape, and he had ordered the lights be killed. It was a smart move; keep them in the dark, but Joel and Ellie had adapted to the absence of light. They knew how to feel their way forward. It would only be a slight hindrance. Ellie hadn't said much since they left the containment rooms, though she seemed a little better. Joel worried about her. On some level, it was easier to worry about Ellie right now than it was to grieve for Tommy. Thinking of losing his baby brother, so cruel and unexpected, just made him angry. They pushed on.

"Do you know where we're going?" Ellie asked some point along the sewer tunnel. They'd been going straight on for a long, long time.

"Yeah," Joel said. "I remember this way from when we were brought down here. We were goin' straight for a long time."

"I remember. It was harder to hide from you there."

"You're very underhand, you know that don't you?"

"What does that mean?"

"Sneaky."

"You bet."

The rush of running water began to echo from further down the tunnel. The great roar grew mightier as they got closer. If there were people up ahead, it might drown out their voices. "Stay low," Joel said, but even his voice couldn't overcome the crash of the waves. He tapped her on the shoulder and lowered his mouth down, close to her head. "Stay – low," Joel said.

"I've been this height for three years. I'm not growing any," she said, but Joel couldn't hear her. They moved on, slowly, until they could see the water. It was brown and muddied and smelled of shit. Joel wondered briefly on how long it took Ora to set it up.  _It must have taken a long time_ , he thought.  _But if Tommy can get a dam working, there's no way a sewer is gonna cause trouble._ Joel looked around the corner; there was a single guard, standing, looking over the flowing sewage.  _Straggler_ , Joel thought instinctively. He felt a memory probe at him from the deep recesses of his mind…

Once, a long time ago, Joel had been a hunter. He felt nothing for the lives he'd taken, for the things he stole, but he took no pride in it. Some of the other hunters… they were savages, and Joel knew it. It had been enough to scare him away from that life; a brutal life. In the drive away after saving Ellie, this was another of the many justifications he offered up to his conscious to rationalise possibly dooming humanity; the Fireflies were a dwindling force – how would they mass-produce and distribute a vaccine? The military wouldn't be much help, of course – no doubt they loved the control they had, the authority over the last remnants of the old world in the form of the quarantine zones.  _And the hunters love their slaughter. They won't take giving that up too kindly. They'd smash a vial of the cure so they could rape and kill more people._ Even in the dark he could tell Ellie was behind him. He thought of her face, of her guilt.  _People like her are the only light we still have. The Fireflies were idiots, the lot of them._

He put a hand out to stop Ellie, to tell her there was one there. He held up a single finger up.  _There's only one_ , he was saying. A silhouetted head nodded. Joel looked out further around the corner, and he could see no others. It felt strange to Joel, yes, but he was fairly sure it wasn't a trap – it wasn't an obvious zone… no way to hear him, and the corridor was straight all the way up to the right, so there was no way to see him either. Joel had perfect sights. He crouched low and moved quickly towards the hunter, moving faster than he normally would (the water could have full-time employment as a sound sponge), and then wrapped his arms around his neck.

Ellie was behind him then too. Joel tightened his grip.

"Where are the other guards posted?" he said, shouting in the man's ear. The smell was terrible this close. Joel felt a sharp jab in his stomach and he released, just a little, but enough for the man to ebb free. He turned and slugged Joel hard in the face. Stumbling back, he tripped over a piece of loose rock.  _Bastard_. Joel expected him to run, thought he'd be in for a chase – but no. The man, with some form of anger and hatred in his eyes, went for Ellie. He dived towards her, and – as Joel clambered to his feet with haste – Ellie's switchblade appeared at her side and she slashed at his arms. Determined, he continued and she slashed again at his face, taking out a bloody chunk of his nose. Joel grabbed him from behind, and threw him – the man collapsed and fell to the floor. Joel shoved a boot under his neck, pushing hard on his throat.

The man's arms twitched like mad, trying to grapple; but he had no gun. Ellie appeared at Joel's side, and the man made for her leg. "To hell with this," Joel muttered, and he lifted his boot and slammed it into the man's skull twice. His arms fell limp at his side.

"Holy shit, Joel," Ellie said over the call of the water.

With a sideways glance and a foot to his ribs, Joel pushed the man into the water, thoughts tumbling around his mind like leaves in an autumn bluster. Ellie, it seemed, had the same thoughts he had.

"Why did he keep coming for me?"

"I dunno," he said. "That's what I was goin' to ask him."

"He made that harder for himself, huh?"

"Yep."

"Nice work with the blade," he said.

"I always have it out when there's someone around."

Joel nodded. They kept going up the long, dark and straight tunnel… back to what Joel could only hope was a large, empty room containing large, empty tables, beside which sat small, empty chairs.  _I doubt they'll make it that easy for us._ As he was walking the roar of the river faded.

"Does every city have one of these?"

"Huh?"

"The sewer tunnels," Ellie said. "Every city?"

"They aren't outside towns, usually. Just smaller towns sometimes have treatment plants, or seaside cities. Pipes and tunnels like these run under every city. Boston had some."

They'd been in the sewers before; every time something common showed up, Ellie had a question. They seemed more this time, however – it seemed like she was asking them intentionally.  _And she is_ , he realised.  _She's tryna distract me from thinkin' 'bout Tommy._  Joel almost smiled at the thought, until he thought of Tommy's name. That had been so close when they were younger. He had been the first one he'd told about Sarah's mother being pregnant.  _I was so young._ The marriage was never meant to last, and Sarah's mom had left. Joel wondered now where she was. Sarah had only asked about her once or twice; he had lied, mostly.  _To protect her, just like I'm protecting Ellie._

"Here we are," Ellie said as they rounded towards the end of the corridor. The stairs led up directly into the large cantina-area. They had to be careful on the stairs; they were made by the hunters, he could tell from the materials and the rough way they were put together. Nails protruded from some edges, planks wet with damp and rotting at the edges.

"Careful," he said as they neared them. "They creak."

"Don't I know it," she sighed. "Let me go up first."

"What?"

"I'm lighter than you."

"Straight back up and then down. Just peek out. Okay?"

She tensed her mouth in a smile and gave an exaggerated nod. Joel shook his head a little, smiling again. He drew his revolver, just in case. Ellie walked up the stairs slowly and surely, every step deliberate and cautious. She kept low for a second, and Joel saw her take a deep breath, and then she popped her head up, looked around a little, and then lowered it again. She turned, sitting on the stairs, and then gave Joel a thumbs up and a wink. Again, he shook his head.  _What a kid._

He walked up the stairs as slow as she did, but still the stairs creaked and groaned under his weight. He looked up and saw that the hall was desolate; the head table where he, Tommy and Ora had sat just hours before was vacant. He felt a sinking feeling inside him, a sadness. He had gone years without seeing Tommy before and yet Joel never missed his little brother as much as he did now. He held the revolver in both hands, but let one drop down to ruffle Ellie's hair as he walked by her. She laughed a little and he did too.

"You get to do that once," she said in mock seriousness.

Joel moved up into the hall. The lights were dimmed but not out, filling the room with a tenebrous orange glow. He kept his gun pointed out and checked the corners that were hidden from his view, but there was nothing. The tables still had plates, though they were completely empty – only scraps remained. Even if they were commanded to leave their food, they'd no doubt gobble it down as they left the room to find Ellie.

The couple walked to the side of the room, under a lower curtain and walking beside pillars to their left that held the full room. Joel wanted to try the side-doors, but most were locked – one or two were open. Inside Joel found some spare parts and a bottle of pills that he shoved into his backpack.  _Just in case._ As they left the small off-room, they heard voices and the creaking of the main doors. Six or seven men filed into the room, rifles in hand. A woman with thick, shining hair that fell in curls around heavy-hooded eyes led them.

"Two of you stay in this room," she said, walking. Joel remembered that gaunt, skull-like face well. But more than that, it was her small, black eyes set Joel off her. Where Ora's eyes deceived with kindness, hers held only malice and cruelty. The sadist in her was not hidden.

"You expect them to slip by us?" asked a man behind her, near the end of the trail. He said it in a cool, confident kind of way.

"I expect you to do as I fucking tell you. I hope that won't be a problem." She did not turn to see his face as she walked.

"No ma'am," the man said quickly.

"Good," she said. Her thin lips twisted into a smile, but her tone didn't seem to revel in it much. "You'll be the one to stay, then. And Harris."

Two men slowed and broke off from the group. The woman led them all down the steps they had just entered by, and, though Joel couldn't make out what she said, he could hear her speaking to them all the way down, even in the tunnel.  _If anyone had been in here while Ellie and I were coming up, they'd have heard us coming_ , he thought, relieved.

"Crazy bitch," Ellie said, shaking her head. Slowly, Joel closed the door to the little side room. Ellie moved back and propped herself up onto a table.

"Yeah. I think she's his second in command."

"The crazier they are the higher they rise, I guess. What we gonna do?"

"I dunno."

"We could wait them out."

"Nah, they might bring more in here. If we get seen, I'd rather it was just by two of 'em."

Ellie nodded. "Yeah." She paused and looked around the room again, though there was little for her to look at. On the wall there were some posters here and there of things from the past. Joel wondered if she was going to ask about them, when he interrupted her thoughts –

"I don't want you to do what you did back there again."

She looked from the posters to him, but said nothing.

"I mean it Ellie. You can't get infected, but you can die. Don't forget that."

"I didn't forget it, Joel," she said and sighed. "I was counting on it." Eyes back to the posters.

Joel narrowed his eyes. It took him a long time to summon up the strength to say what he wanted to say, but he did get there. "I will do anythin' I have to do to keep you safe. You are… you're the only thing in my world that means anything now, Ellie. It's you and me."

Ellie's eyes seemed to brighten a little. They flickered to his and for what seemed like a long time they just stared at each other. Joel had forgotten what it was like to have a child, but Ellie was that now – she was a daughter to him.

"… I'm telling you I heard  _something_ from in here."

 _Shit_ , he thought. Ellie looked at the door and Joel saw their shadows under it. She moved off the table. Slowly, the door opened. Joel dived at the man who opened it, falling on him and punching him repeatedly. He couldn't afford to let a gun go off. Then he felt a gun at his back, and he was sure he was about to die and leave Ellie an orphan for the second time, the gun fell. He slammed his fist hard one last time against the man on the floor and looked around to see blood leaking from the man's back, and Ellie's knife biting at his throat. The spray of blood released almost showered his face, but he turned and his back got the most of it. He heard the thud as the man hit the floor and he stood up. The man on the floor's eyes twitched open a little.

"… please don't, please don't…"

Joel kicked the man hard and felt a crunch under his boot.

He turned to Ellie, whose hands were twitching, her long sleeves bloodied. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, Joel."

"It's okay," Joel said, reassuring her. He wanted to give her a hug, but he couldn't, he had to get rid of the bodies. He dragged his own kill into the side-room first, and then Ellie's. She was still standing with her switchblade still in her hand. This wasn't Ellie's first kill, no, but he wondered if it was her most brutal. He remembered his own first kill. There had been one before Jimmy Cooper – his wife. She had come at him, feral, biting and trying to claw at him.

" _Jean. Come on, Jean, stop this. What's the hell's wrong with you?"_ He'd put it off for as long as he could, but she was trying so hard to rip at him, and he bashed a brick into the side of her head and then retreated, back into the house, where Sarah was. Jimmy must have been following him. He'd killed him next.

" _You shot him… I saw him this morning…"_

He put a hand on each of her shoulders. "You did good. Come on, Ellie. We're almost out of here."

Her throat tensed as she tried to swallow whatever was stuck in her throat, and then nodded hurriedly, almost too fast. Joel picked up the rifle and thought it felt too light, but then from the tunnel he heard noises, voices. "Come on," he said, and they ran off towards the door. On the stone floor where they'd killed the hunters there was still blood, but the woman and her posse wouldn't see unless they went there, which Joel reckoned they would. They couldn't have been too far down the tunnel, and they were getting closer.

They left via the main doors and there was a single guard. His eyes widened and he reached for his gun, but Joel slammed the butt of the rifle into his head and he crumped into a heap. Joel doubted he was dead, but that didn't matter much then – it was about getting the hell out of there.  _There's too many of them. They're gonna get us._

"Come on," he said.

"Yeah."

They ran down the corridor to the left, and then twisted up to the right. The corridor here was a hill, and Joel remembered that it took them to the entrance. And then the entrance was in sight. They slowed a little as they walked towards it.

"We can't run," he said. "If there're hunters behind us, they'll shout, and anyone outside'll shoot us on sight. If we go slow and open the doors slowly, and they're all facing away, or there's nobody there, we run. Left, out by the buses and under the fence."

"And then where?"

"I hadn't thought that far ahead."

"Bobby's?"

"I don't know, Ellie. If we tell him you're immune again, he'll think we're crazy and try to kill us."

"How did you convince him to let you stay in the first place?"

"He knew Tommy." They were drawing closer to the door. Through the gaps between the double-doors and the windows Joel could see the yellow flash flood outside, the spotlights spilling light everywhere. It would not be easy. "We told him you'd fallen and broken your arm."

"Liar liar," she said.

"Pants on fire."

"Huh?"

"Doesn't matter."

Joel tried to look the glass but it was tinted and dark.  _Damn it_ , he thought, and knew he'd have to open the door. Deep breath in and he licked his lips.  _Look and that's it._ He opened the door as slowly as he could, peering out the gap. He couldn't see anything at first, but then he saw them all – more than a dozen, around the area, some looking in his vague direction. He closed the door again. There was no way in hell they'd get out of there.

"We won't manage it," he said. "We need another way."

"There's a map in the control room," Ellie said.

Joel thought for a moment. He doubted anybody would be in there, but he couldn't predict this group. Still, the room was too small to hold a group and he doubted Ora would spare even two or three of them for hunting him down.  _He killed my brother,_ he thought.  _I threatened to kill him and I will. I'll rip his goddamn lungs out through his ass, and he's afraid. He'll be with them, protected by them. He might even be outside._

There was a primal instinct inside Joel that wanted to sprint outside and look for that stupid fucking fedora and shoot him in the head. But that wouldn't help anyone; getting a bullet in his own skull would hinder Ellie. If Ellie hadn't been there, he would have. He would have died for his brother, like he once wanted to die for Sarah. But now he wouldn't die for anyone – now he had someone to live for.

"If we get the map we can find a way back through the tunnels, out into the forest. The cabin has all our stuff."

Ellie shivered. "Ugh, I hated that forest."

"Sun should be coming up by the time we get there. The hunters won't know there way to the cabin well, we should be alright. Then find our way to somewhere. It's the best we've got."

"Let's go then."

Ellie and him skirted back up the corridor they'd came; they knew their way to the control room without the aid of the signs this time, though Joel checked them every corner they turned anyway, to be sure. He trusted himself, sure, but they couldn't afford to take a wrong turn and stumble into a bunch of hunters.

"Do you think we'll ever see Marlene again?" Ellie asked.

Joel paused a little before he opened the door, though he could touch the handle.

"I don't know," Joel said. "Last time she seemed pretty sure she was staying there, laying low." He knew Ellie knew he was lying, but he didn't expect her to ask again. He'd underestimated her feelings towards Marlene. She still cared about her. _If only I could tell her what she tried to do_ , Joel thought. But he wouldn't. Joel never would, no matter how much Ellie asked.  _She can't know._ It wasn't for himself Joel lied, it was for Ellie. If she ever found out the truth, all that anger and guilt she had would only get worse. Joel wouldn't put her through that.

"Okay."

Joel nodded and put his ear to the door; there were no voices from inside.

He opened the door. Too late did he realise that, if they could hear voices murmuring from the inside of that room hours before, anyone inside the room could hear them. Joel saw a mouth twisted in exertion and a stupid fucking hat, and before he could reach for his gun, a hard plank of wood struck him in the head and he was out like a light.


	10. Chapter 10

**Author's Note:** Like I said, a much shorter chapter. I don't have much to say in the author's note here, but I am feeling that this story might be drawing to an end. Maybe five chapters or so more, maybe slightly less. I have an idea for another  _The Last of Us_ story, but more information in that will come in the author's note for the next chapter, I think. I hope you like this chapter, but it is  _by far_  the shortest I've ever written. Still, slightly longer than your average chapter on this website. I've never liked short chapters, I don't think there's enough content. Which chapter lengths do you prefer —are my chapters typically too long? So, yes.  _Read and review! :D_

* * *

**ELLIE V**

* * *

Joel had fallen before Ellie could grasp what was happening, and then she saw him. It pained her that her initial instinct was to run, to save herself, but she wouldn't leave Joel. She would not abandon him. If she ran, he would kill Joel and then he would kill her. She looked down at him, spread on the floor. She stayed very still and she could still —

"See him breathing? I do too. He's very fortunate," Ora said. "A blow like that would put most men down. For good."

"He's not like most men," Ellie said. The rifle was on the floor, trapped under Joel's weight; there was no way she could get it out from underneath him before Ora slammed her skull in too. She tried not to let her eyes linger on the gun too long, and she mentally dismissed it as an option.

"Why, I think you might be right there. Come on in here, will you? Leave the body. Wouldn't want that gun going off underneath him, would we? That'd makes quite a mess, and we don't want that now."

 _He saw me looking,_  she thought. He had little else to do but watch her, and his eyes made her uneasy. They were eyes that reminded her of Joel's; sometimes there was a kindness behind them, other times they revealed nothing. This was the latter. Ellie could see his thoughts no more than Joel could see anything.

She knew only this: in time, Joel would wake up. She had to stall, had to distract Frances Ora as much she could.  _I have to buy us some more time or he'll kill us here and now._ She wondered briefly if she could nick him with her switchblade before he could slug the wooden beam at her. At this point, she wasn't yet willing to find out. Ellie would have to wait.

Slowly she moved into the control room. Ora moved back, the great windows that overlooked the complex to his back. In the distance Ellie could see the black night breaking into a velvet blue where the land met sea. Dawn was not far off.  _We should be in the tunnels heading for the cabin._

The man's grey eyes watched her move in. She could feel them on her, even when she look out over the trees or at Joel. They didn't look at her with the same perverse fascination that David's had, no; he had been broken by the world and driven to cannibalism. Perhaps when things had been normal before, deep down David had always been a dark character — with Ora she had no clue. He seemed to like the world as it was. He was thriving.

"Why won't you just let us fucking go?"

"You've got a miserable tongue on you, young lady. Would you say that to your mother?"

"Yeah. She's been dead a long time and I'd really like to see her again."

Ora laughed, a folksy laugh with real mirth, more suited to a man who told stories around a camp fire. Sometimes she heard Joel laughing like that too. But, though Joel was almost fifty, Ellie could tell this man was younger. She couldn't tell, not really, but he had about the same amount of wrinkles as Tommy.  _As Tommy_ _had_. The memory made her angry. He tried to speak, but she missed it and rushed on, cutting him off.

"Why?" she asked, moving towards him a little. She wanted him on edge, unsure. She didn't know if this man could be pushed to that, but all in all he was just another hunter, no matter what fucking crazy stories he told himself.

"Why? To show god that we care."

"They're fucking  _people_ ," she said, angered. "They aren't gods, you sick fu—"

He took a few sharp steps forward and, before she could move, slapped her hard with the back of his hand. A jeweled ring cut into her cheek and she felt a little blood trickle down. "That language is trying my patience." Ellie wanted to pull the finger at him.  _Try this_ , she would say, but she had to keep him talking until Joel began to stir. If he tried to slam the wood against him again… "I know they ain't gods. What I believe is a lot more complicated than that, but my followers… they don't like complicated. They like the old religions. Something to worship, something physical. They don't like the idea of a god up above, no. That's negligent faith."

"You're just lying to try and keep fucking control."

"I'm not lying – I'm making it easier for them. It's a lot easier for them to lose people this way, and we have lost people. I have too, though never to the infected themselves. No, always people. What I believe is that there is a god, in heaven, yes. The same Christian god that led me to church every Sunday, work permittin'. I believe the fungus and the spores are  _instruments_  of His love."

 _He is fucking crazy_ , she thought. Out of the corner of her eye she thought she saw Joel move, but she couldn't be sure. Ora's eyes almost wondered, so she shifted quickly to draw them back to her.  _Come on, Joel. Wake up and realise what the fuck is going on._

"Why do you want us dead so much?"

" _Why?_ You're an abomination before the gods. Imagine you were me – imagine my faith, built up so well and my followers love me so dearly. And then appears a girl… a girl who is somehow immune to the disease." Ora shook his head a little and tutted. "I knew you were special. I overheard Maria and Tommy talkin' about you, after you left Jackson before. Off to see the Fireflies. What happened with them, do you know?"

"There are a lot of immune people," Ellie said. "They didn't need us."

Ora's eyes widened a little and Ellie knew she had told him something he didn't know; she wondered if he'd spoken to Joel already. "It looks like we have a liar in the room," Ora said, smiling a little. He shook his head at Joel.

"What do you mean?"  _Does he know something about what happened in Utah?_

"This little monkey here told me you went to the university and then came straight back. There are  _immune_ people there?"

 _Fuck, I told him too much – Joel lied to him about where we went. Shit, shit, shit. He doesn't know we went to Salt Lake City; just lie to him._ "Yes. A lot of them. The Fireflies are experimenting, they're going to create a cure."

"The Fireflies…  _look for the light_ ," he quoted. "It was that little mantra that drew me to them in the first place. I wanted to carry the fire, wield the light," he said with an exaggerated flourish of his plank of wood. He leaned his back against the wall. "I was very disappointed to find they were a group of idealistic idiots. Their leader was aimless. She was a sheep too."

"Fuck you, man."

"Oh, did you know her?"  _Damn it. Shut up, Ellie. Just keep your mouth closed!_ "This was years ago. You must have known her recently. How recent?"

"Last saw her a year ago."

"It's been… fourteen years since I last saw her. She was so focused on saving the world… and now she's got lots of people who are immune." He rubbed his thumb against his forefinger whilst staring at Ellie, but his thoughts were elsewhere. She chanced a glance – one of Joel's eyes were open, he was awake. He closed it as soon as she looked. Slowly, she moved her head back towards Ora.  _He can't think I'm trying to avoid looking at something._ The man seemed a step ahead as always, but when she looked back at him he was still in thought. She considered breaking his thought but she left him.  _The longer he stays like that the longer Joel has to plan something._ She moved closer to the left, towards the cabinet. She imagined that Ora would turn, back to him, and lunge for Joel… and she'd go to him… and then the day was back.

 _Smoke hung deep in the air, filling the room. She could see him moving slowly past the tables across the way from him… following her, running at her. The machete was in his hand._ He is going to kill me. He is going to kill me.  _She stabbed him in the back, she stabbed him over and over and over…_

"They're just as much as a threat to me as you are, Ellie." She stared at him and he smiled. He moved closer towards her. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Joel's eyes open a little, but Ora now had his side to him… he wouldn't see him. Ora advanced on Ellie. He tightened his grip on the wood – or was she just imagining it? No matter what she saw, and what she didn't… he was coming closer. She wished she could see what was in his eyes.  _If he comes any nearer I'll fucking stab him in the face._

And he did come closer, too. And a shape moved behind him, and she could see the shape that was Joel move up behind him. For the first time she could see what was in his eyes; and he lifted the wood and he swung it, it cracked as it smacked Ellie in the head and she fell down too, and then she heard it crack again – but she didn't feel it. A sick thud on the floor and he had known Joel was there; maybe he had seen it reflected in his eyes. Ellie looked up and saw Ora lifting the rifle out of Joel's hands. He was probably concussed, though Ellie didn't figure that.  _Come on_ , she thought. She wasn't out but the world span. She could hear extracts… bits and pieces.

"You tried and you failed, Joel. You can't fight a soldier of god."

 _I can fucking cut one,_ Ellie thought and she woozily removed her switchblade. She swiped it across the back of his foot, slashing at the muscle there. Ora screamed and his leg buckled and gave way. She stabbed his foot through again. His elbow slammed her in the face and she winced, blood spurting from her nose, the crunch of it breaking. He reached for the rifle and Joel snatched it. He pointed it at Ora's head and fired.  _Click click click._ Empty.

"Very few of the weapons in this facility work, unfortunately. Fear tactics. They work well."

Ellie stood and walked around the desk in the middle of the room to stand beside Joel. Frances Ora moved backwards, almost cowering, until he got to the back of the room, back against the cabinet where they'd hidden. Joel lifted up the planks of wood, but it'd shattered – broken into pieces.

_This is the only shot we'll get at this, Joel. Once we leave here we can't come back. There's too many of them. We have to endure. Endure and survive._

Before Joel could even look around for something to kill him with, Ellie moved up and she slid her knife between his ribs. Once and then twice, relatively close, right in the his gut. "Fuck you," she said, and then spat in his face. Even as it happened he tried to reach out to slap Ellie, but Joel grabbed his hand, and then he kicked it hard against the steel cupboard.

"Let's go, Ellie."

"Yeah," she said, and they left him there for dead.  _Let him fucking rot before they find him. I want him to bleed._ She thought of Tommy as they left. They moved on down the corridors and heard voices, but they couldn't wait. Joel looked down both ways and saw they were coming in from the main doors. If they walked past they would see them, they couldn't wait.

"If they come by here they'll see us, if we go back into the control room then they'll hear us. We've gotta run.  _Shit_ , we forgot the map –"

Ellie shook her head slowly, and produced it. Joel nodded.

Joel and Ellie looked around the corner one last time. Six, maybe seven of them. Joel checked the blueprints, nodded. They took a deep breath, the voices travelling up towards them, and then they ran around the corner. The voices grew loud.

" _Shit_ , there!  _THERE!_ "

Ellie could only hope their guns were empty.


	11. Chapter 11

**Author's Note:** Hey there! It's been a  _long_  time, and I have MISSED you. Yes, YOU. I feel terrible for neglecting you, so here we go: back FULL SWING. I've missed the characters a lot since I've been gone but it's nice to see them again. I'm going to be honest: I struggled with this chapter. I wanted a nice balance of humour and darkness, and in this chapter there's sort of an unhinging. All will be explained in the future, I promise. Let me know what you think in reviews, make sure to favourite and follow if you enjoy it, it encourages me to write more QUICKLY. I understand that the TLOU fanfiction community has really blown up since I last updated, and that's great. It means there's a potential new audience out there, I suppose, but it also means that there are so many great new fanfictions that I have to live up to. I hope you guys still stick with  _The Last of Them._

* * *

**JOEL VI**

* * *

The footsteps and followed them up the corridors as they ran, sprinting. Sometimes Ellie slashed her knife across their throats, Joel shoved his elbow hard against their face. They crumpled and fell as the pair of them mowed them down, fleeing with all they had. The shouts and the footsteps always just behind them. Once, Joel thought he heard a dog barking and his guts had dropped. Joel had liked dogs a long time ago – he had been close to getting Sarah one, but now… dogs weren't loveable anymore. They were two types of dogs now – wild and feral, or domesticated (and still feral).

"GET THEM! Your days are fucking numbered!"

Ellie laughed a little. "I'm okay with that," she said as they ran. "Just as long as it's a really big fucking number."

Back through the mess hall and into the tunnels they fled, Ellie always slightly ahead. Joel was exhausted, but he kept going, breathing heavily and his chest sore. In his ribs he felt the sting of a stitch.  _Please stop running,_ it begged. The world kept him running, and the running kept him fit, but the effects of age had not deigned to leave him entirely unscathed. His legs ached and his back was close to folding in on itself on a spasm. It would not be the first time. He was almost fifty. Hell, maybe he was fifty, Joel couldn't tell anymore.

The orange lights were brighter now, casting dancing shadows along the rocky walls. Indiscernible mutterings from behind them told them they knew where they were, but they did not grow closer.

"Why aren't they coming after us?" Ellie said, ahead of him. She had been sprinting, but her pace had slowed. Joel wondered if Ellie noticed the toll his age took on him.  _I wonder if she knows what age I am at all._  It'd been a long time since Joel wondered what people thought of the way he looked. He made a note to ask her later.

"They're hesitatin'," Joel replied. "I dunno why. Let's not question it right now, huh?"

"What if there's infected in here?"

He shook his head, though she wasn't looking at him. "I doubt it. So far it seems pretty obvious that –" He had to stop for a moment, his breath was running away and if he didn't catch it, he'd probably have a heart attack. "Ellie, wait."

"What's wrong?" she said, turning. Her eyes were raised and his brow was furrowed with worry, confusion.

He paused, listening, just for a moment.  _To make sure they ain't following us._ The voices had died out and they didn't even seem to be travelling up the corridor anymore. Besides, they had made a couple of turns.

"I just need a minute," he said, hands on his hips, panting with every word. He tried not to notice the furrows afurrowing deeper in Ellie's brow. "Think we can find our way back out to the cabin?"

Ellie brushed loose strands of hair behind her ear, eyes glimmering with some unknown victory. "I dunno," she said, and then took off her backpack and reached inside. She produced the blueprints. "Still remember how to read one of these?"

Joel rolled his eyes and held out his hand. His breathing had slowed but he could still feel his heart pounding against his ribs so hard the rest of his body could feel the reverberations. Ellie put the map in it and he squinted to see it. Orange light on blue paper wasn't ideal. He folded out sections and parts, tracing their route with his finger. Occasionally his head looked up for markings on walls.  **N7** ,  **SR2** ,  **ME2**  – all labels for sections within the underground. By chance he noticed the date on the blueprints and he eyes got stuck there.

"Joel?"

"Hmm?"

"You've been staring at the corner of the map for about a minute."

"Oh. It's just the… it's just, there's a date. 2012."

"What is it now?"

"Huh?" He looked up.

"The date. What's the date?"

"2033."

"Weird, huh?"

"I guess I thought there'd be rocketships and aliens by now."

"Huh?"

 _You ain't got time for this right now, Joel._ "Another time. We gotta go."

With the map they doubled back and looped, taking different turns this time. The tunnel grew darker as they went, and eventually they were walking beside the running water.

Ellie was walking beside him. "What if we went out the front gate again? When we came through this tunnel the first time we went up and outside. Could we do that again?"

Joel thought for a moment, and then said, "I don't wanna risk it. We just keep going this way. Back up to the cabin, and we see where this takes us."

"And then what?"

He took a deep breath. He'd dreaded the question. "I don't know."

They had to go on without Tommy, but Joel still felt like he needed his input, like he was an essential part of the process.  _A long time has passed since I needed Tommy,_ Joel reflected.  _But it hasn't been long since he needed me._ There was a sting at his ribs again, but it seemed more like an emotional twitch than a physical stitch. He tried to ignore it, pay no mind to the worries in his mind.

He had Ellie; she was what he needed. Together, Joel and Ellie could continue to make their way in the darkness of these tunnels, and then emerge unscathed. Then they'd push on through the darkness of the world, and they'd endure.  _Endure and survive._ Were the guilt not eating at him, and the worry that they were wandering out into the world blind as a clicker fresh in his mind, he might have smiled.  _She says that to me all the time, and I've never said it to her._ Maybe Joel had just never been one for mantras. Maybe one day he'd say it to her. Just to see how she reacted.

They walked in silence for some time. The lights made noises sometimes, crackling and popping like Joel's old bones, and each time they would both flinch. His hand would reach down for a gun he did not have, and Ellie's switchblade would be in her hand. The smell of rank shit grew thicker as they moved on; muggy shit that made Joel sweat under his clothes. It was hot down here, and it made the smell all the more unbearable.

"Holy shit at the smell down here, Joel."

"Yeah. It's worse than it was before."

Ellie shivered a little. "No shit. I think I know something that could help us with the smell." She pulled her shirt up over her nose and mouth.

Joel laughed. "That's it? That's our plan?"

"Hey, it's  _my_ plan. Get your own."

"My shirt probably smells a lot worse than this."

Joel hadn't washed his clothes in a long time.

"D'you think there's anywhere that still cleans their clothes?"

He shook his head. "I doubt it. All the plumbing won't work anymore. And besides, is there anywhere you would trust to go for a shower?"

"I don't know. Never used one."

"Oh."

"One day, maybe," she almost sighed dreamily, as if her thoughts had wandered elsewhere.

"Might be you will," Joel said, though privately he doubted it. He couldn't even be sure if she heard him. The world where people needed to take their shoes off at the door, where neighbours were people we visited, was gone, and showers were too. In his bag Joel had some alcohol rub but it was for sterilising things more than cleaning; in fact, he'd never used it for cleaning.

Ellie was quiet as they walked, which Joel didn't mind. His brother was on his mind again. In his head he heard Tommy's voice.

"I'm with Maria now, at least. Dead."

_You aren't a religious man, Tommy._

"What can I say, death has changed me? I've seen the face of god."

Joel shuddered a little, hoping that Ellie didn't notice, but she was skirting ahead of him, whistling.  _What would Ora have made of Tommy saying that?_

"Jack shit," Tommy's disembodied voice said. "The man's a lying piece'a shit."

Joel rubbed at his head.  _I need to sleep._ It seemed like days since he had last slept; his head was pounding and Tommy's dead voice nagged at him. In his gut he felt stirring, the guilt again – always there, ebbing at him. Ellie had it too… she felt like she didn't deserve to live, but Joel had no such reservations about life.  _Or do I?_ It was slowly eating away at him. The names.  _Sarah, Tess, Tommy…_ And now his guilt was talking to him; clawing at him, like a beast trying to escape. And then it tried to. He felt it travelling up his throat, stinging all the way and the sick spewed out, wretching acid bile along the floor in front of him.

Ellie was at his side. Her hand was on his shoulder. "Joel?"

"I just feel a lil' woozy."

"You took a slam to the head from a plank of wood, I'm not surprised. Why don't we sit down for a minute?"

"Yeah. Yeah, that's a good idea."

Joel moved back from the sick a bit, guided by Ellie, though he couldn't smell it for the sewage. He collapsed onto the floor prematurely and Ellie stumbled a little. "Sorry." She nodded and sat down beside him. They sat there for almost as long as they'd walked. He felt his eyelids growing heavy but he wouldn't let them fall; if he had a concussion, he might not wake up and he wouldn't burden Ellie with his body.  _Not again._

She had proved resourceful and clever the last time it had happened; she'd supported him and saved his life, kept him going through winter. Without her he'd have died.  _I won't put her in that position again_ , he thought and tried to push himself up from the ground again, but his arm didn't have the strength.

"Can we just sit here for a little while? My legs are fucking screaming at me," Ellie said.

Joel looked around to see Ellie, head tilted away from him, staring off into the blackness across the river of sewage. There was a wall to be seen on the other side of the railing he was sure, but it couldn't be seen. The tendrils of light did not reach that far out; they were swallowed by the darkness just over the railings. Sometimes Joel couldn't even make out the shape of the running water. Then again, it was almost as black as the darkness around it.

They sat in silence for some time, only the dark and the water dripping around them. The smell of the sewage did not get better as they sat though, it became more putrid and strong. Joel had thought he would adapt to the smell, but no – the reek grew worse and worse.

"Are you okay?" Ellie asked after some time, worried. He didn't know when they'd last spoke aloud.

"Yeah I'm fine," he said, his low southern voice barely a grunt. His head was still thumping at him from the inside; at that moment, Joel had never been more aware of the fact that he had a skull. "We should probably get moving."

"Joel, if you wanna talk about Tommy or – or whatever, you know," she said. Ellie was trying hard to hold eye contact but her eyes kept lagging down, unsure.

Joel smiled as well as he could, but he didn't even manage to bare his teeth. "I know," he said.

It took a long time but eventually they saw light at the other end. Not sunlight, no, it was the moon. All silver light and no heat. On the approach they saw bodies, a few of them. For a moment Joel had begun to panic, but it passed when he realised what they were – the infected that they had slain on their way down from the cabin. His eyes darted and his movement sped a little, though he tried to resist. Ellie was slightly ahead of him and it seemed she'd divined the same. Her fingers caught his eye and he noticed she was lightly brushing them over her second bite.

He almost moved his fingers towards his watch but then he came to the stairs and they moved up them, into the body-strewn cabin. There was blood everywhere on all the floors, and in the air there was –

"JOEL!"

Quickly he held his breath, not taking any deep ones – that would make it much worse – and reached into his bag and brought out his gas mask. He pulled the string over his head and attached it firmly to the front of his face. Through the murky plastic he could only just make out Ellie in front of him.

"Did – did any…?"

"I don't think so," he said. His voice echoed deep and loud inside the mask, as always.

She nodded a few times and allowed her eyes to look around for her bag. It was here somewhere, she knew. It would take Joel half a day to find it with the dirty visor and the spores swirling in the air. On the floor in front of him some of the bodies had fungus growing out from them onto the floor, like some bacterial blanket keeping them warm in death.

 _Why did it take me so long to see them?_ He thought for a moment on that; he thought about how many people he had killed, how many miles he'd travelled; all that and to be defeated by spores because he wasn't looking where he was going.  _Never again._

Ellie was holding her bag up in front of him when he came to again.

"The spores must'a kept people away," he said. "C'mon, let's get outta here."

The cold night air felt good at first. It made him feel as though he was free again; no saggy heat oppressing them, keeping them down. The heatless light of the moon filtering through the clouds and trees high above them, only some of it made its way down to their feet.

They walked until they could no longer see the cabin when Ellie stopped.

"Joel," she began and he turned, "where are we going?"

He shook his head. "I don't know," he said. "Where do you want to go?"

She said nothing for a little while, staring at the floor. Joel didn't interrupt her; he wanted to know where it was she wanted to go. There were so many places, continental United States were a big place. Ellie hadn't seen so much of it.

"How long would it take to get back to the Quarantine Zone? Back to Boston?"

"As long as it took us to get here. Maybe longer. We'd need'ta get a car again, that won't be easy, we don't got Bill this time. Is that what you want to do?"

"How long would it take to get to – Texas?"

"I don't know," he said, stunted a little.  _Texas?_

"More or less?"

"Less," Joel said. "Much less."

"Let's go to Texas."

"Texas is a big place."

"We'll go to where you know. Do you – remember it?"

He thought hard, he thought of the streets – he could still imagine driving into town, driving back, taking Sarah to school; hell, Joel could still imagine it all on a map. Joel remembered so many things about Texas, but all he saw was, "Yeah."

"I wanna go there."

There were a lot of demons in Texas for Joel; demons and ghosts, and the south was not safe if reports were to be believed. At the Boston newspost they'd heard of a giant quarantine zone in Texas, fortified far beyond what Boston had experienced. It wouldn't be easy, he knew.

"Let's go."

They started to walk.

They walked for a long time, sometimes pausing to stop to regain some energy. Not once did Ellie express any tiredness, and so Joel didn't either, but he was exhausted. His legs were tired and his back hurt. Maybe it was right for him to return to Texas, he hadn't wanted to leave in the first place. But Tommy had begged, pleaded…  _Tommy._

When the sun came up it was hot. Joel took his jacket off and tied it around his waist; Ellie did not, she left her own on. Joel suspected that she didn't like to because of the bite on her arm.

Hours later, they reached a road. It was empty, though in the distance a deer sprang across the road.

"Just leave it," Ellie said. "It's not worth the trouble. Is this the way to Texas?"

"I have no clue. I've been looking for road signs. I don't got a magnet in me that takes me back to Texas."

She gave some over-emphasised mock laughter.

They began to walk up the road, hoping they would find a car that worked, knowing that they probably wouldn't. They came to a hill eventually with the forest long behind them, the river meandering left and right always on the right of the road. They kept off the road, but for the hill they realised they couldn't. Up they went and what they saw made them stop.

The road stretched out miles ahead of them; in the distance the sun glared off the shining hard road surface, broken in places. There were sections of fog in the distance, parts of the road were obscured. There were cars and small houses in the distance too; things that could help, things that could hinder. The sun was lowering itself down behind the clouds at last; the day was coming to an end.

Just as fast as spring had come, summer had arrived.

The days would be long, the walking would be hard.

But they'd beat on down the road, Joel travelling towards his past, Ellie into her own uncertain future. Joel worried a lot about what they'd find in Texas. A few times he wanted to tell Ellie he didn't want to go, but maybe some part of him did want to go. To see what they'd find.

_You know what you'll find there. Turn back._

They didn't turn back. They kept going. They always kept going. Where others fell along the journey, Joel and Ellie did not falter; they endured and they survived. Mankind had not disappeared but humanity was, and Joel did not delude himself; maybe his was gone too. But he cared for Ellie, he loved Ellie more than he did anything else.

Nothing would hurt her. And if they tried, he would hunt them down until there were none left, until the last of them begged for mercy. And then he'd kill them too.

Ellie was whistling again, the sun setting behind her in the west. It made for a beautiful sight.

Joel and Ellie kept going.

* * *

 **Author's PS:** I know it feels like the end, but it isn't the end. This ends the first phase of  _The Last of Them_ , the phase of Wyoming. Next up begins  _The Summer Phase_ , which will comprise maybe ten chapters, maybe slightly less. I'm looking forward to this piece unfolding with you as it goes. What do you think is next up? After twenty years, is Joel losing it, is his mental health really deteriorating or is it just the slamdunk to the head? Is Ora dead? All these questions will be answered soon.  **Looking forward to sharing them with you. ;)**


	12. Chapter 12

**Author's Note:** So this is starting to kind of pick-up focus again, but I'm gonna warn you straight up that  _The Last of Them_  is in for a dark turn. Joel's mind is really damaged, Ellie is confused, and there are hunters prowling the, and there's nothing more a hunter likes than a wounded animal. So this begins the  **Summer Arc** , which will encompass ten chapters. It took a long time to write this one, longer than it took to write Tommy's death actually. This arc will be Ellie-heavy, for reasons that I'm sure you'll discover, but there will still be Joel chapters. I hope you enjoy reading it. Don't worry, this will still be The Last of Us; the characters will still be recognisable, you'll still love them and want things to work out for them... but the question is: will things work out for them? Stayed tuned...

* * *

**ELLIE**

* * *

_Breathe slowly, keep your focus._

The arrow tip was trained on the young deer. With her tongue she had wet the back of her hand, the gentle rub of the wind felt cooler. She was waiting for the wind to stop, or change direction just a little. She was peering through a gap in two trees that led out into an open plain where the deer was; the trees made it difficult to aim too far to each side, making her wait for a gap in the wind's current. She waited and waited, keeping the bow still. The muscles in her arms began to ache a little.  _Come on, come on, I'm gonna break my arm here._

She kept her eye on the deer, though she felt the wind cease before she saw the leaves around her sway to a stop; her fingers slackened and let the arrow fly loose from its notch; it pierced the deer and it gave a shriek and fell, dead.  _Yes._ The opening was clear, no voices either, and so she moved out. She tied a few ropes around the deer's legs and began to drag it along the forest floor back towards the cabin.

Ellie had spent a long time in the cabin; they had been there for four days, and they hadn't been fun. Food was plentiful around these parts, and they hadn't sighted the hunters of Texas since they arrived. The borders were patrolled heavily, but they'd arrived when night was thick and the hunters hadn't swept the area yet, so presumably they hadn't noticed the ruined generator that powered the electric fence. The hunters had been well-armed, though. Joel hadn't said much on it but Ellie suspected they had robbed a military base, as she knew there were plenty in Texas. The cold hadn't proven to be much of a problem either, it was practically always crispy and warm, even in the middle of the night you could tell it was summer.

It wouldn't take long to get back to the cabin. Though it was near a main road, its location was still relatively remote. There was a small body of water to the north of the house, and the tributaries ran through the forest floor. Ellie trailed the forest path she had tried to commit to memory on the way to find food for them, and the river skittled past on her left. In truth she hoped she wouldn't hit the deer and she'd be allowed to stay outside a little longer, but the heat meant it would be stupid to leave the deer out for longer than she had to.  _Let's hope Joel's in a better mood._

For a while now Joel's moods had come and gone; sometimes he was his usual self, talkative and funny, caring… but there were days when he wasn't. There were days when Joel's mood changed, he became withdrawn and sad, he spoke little and when Ellie tried to reach out she met nothing but a brick wall. Recently, it had been getting to her. She wondered if it was her fault, or if it was Texas. It had been her idea to come to Texas, of course, so surely And so she left for a while – not for food, they had snared rabbits already.  _Though rabbits taste like shit compared to deer._ She had left hoping that, if she was the cause of his sombre mood, some time away from her would do him good.

 _I'll find out soon, I guess._ She could see the chimney through the trees ahead of her, though there was no smoke rising from it.  _And I doubt any has for a while._ Smoke would be an easy giveaway that there were people hiding inside, and there no question at all of lighting one inside it. Still, they had found sheets and blankets and they had kept them warm well enough.  _If we can survive winter in north at a frozen lakeside resort, we can survive summertime Texas without a fire._ Sometimes the heat woke her in a cold sweat. Usually it was the nightmares.

She pushed the door open and pulled the deer in. It was a young deer, and light. Enough meat to do them for a few days, maybe a week if they were careful.  _We don't have to be careful_ , she thought. True enough, there were so many animals around the area. Ellie wondered when they were going to move again; the cabin was secure and remote and in a nice area. It took them just over four weeks to get from Wyoming to Texas, but she thought it was worth it. If they stayed here maybe they wouldn't have to worry about the cold creeping into their bones as they slept ever again.

"... my fault, I swear," came a voice through the thin wooden walls of the cabin. "It was him. It wasn't me."

 _Joel_ , she knew at once. Slowly she dropped the deer to the floor and took the bow from her back and an arrow from the quiver. She only had a few left but she would make them count. Aiming steadily she moved slowly towards the door. It was closed. She took a deep breath and then kicked it open; it swung open and then stuck, like she'd noticed it had the day before. She aimed an arrow at the first body she saw, and the body jumped up and pointed a revolver at Ellie.

"Joel?" she asked, frightened. She kept her bow up and looked around the rest of the room quickly. His gun was shaking in his arm a little, his eyes wide with worry. "Joel, who the hell were you talking to?"

He lowered his gun but his eyes were still huge. "Sorry, Ellie. I was just mutterin' away."

She lowered her bow, holding it in her right hand and the arrow in her left. "Jesus, you scared the shit outta me, Joel."

"Sorry," he said again. He seemed out of place. He was standing, arms dropped by his side and revolver in hand, staring off into space at something. No – at nothing (she checked).  _He was talking to himself._

And then outside, she heard the unmistakable sound of a large vehicle pulling up outside.  _Shit._ She looked to Joel but he was still elsewhere.  _Fucking hell, Joel._ He walked over to him and grabbed his shoulder, shaking him. "Shit, we have to get upstairs," she said quietly, and then again, louder, when he didn't reply. A door opened outside and voices followed.  _Shit._

They made their way upstairs, Joel followed but not as quickly as she would have liked. Still, not much of a problem, the hunters were still outside. They hid in the room that overlooked the front of the cabin; she looked out the horizontal blinds, separating two of them as they were drawn. There were a lot of them out there, and a giant tank with a turret mounted on top. The hunters were outfitted in military uniform, gas masks on their heads. Joel walked – almost staggered – around the room in a sort of daze; it was worse than it had been in the past, worse than he had been when she left him.  _Has he been drinking?_ She wanted to try and smell for it but the voices rose, louder.

"… and so I says to Cyril, I says –"

"We gonna scout this area?" interrupted a voice. All of them were deep and echoed within the gas masks.

"Naw," replied the first, southern, thicker and lower than Joel's. "This sector is being looked at tomorrow by the fourth division."

Ellie's gut sank; she felt saddened for some reason, but she knew they'd have to move eventually. Joel crept slowly towards the window; the floor below them creaked in certain places, he seemed to remember that at least.  _Maybe he isn't drunk._ That wide-eyed stagger frightened Ellie a little; it made her hope he  _was_ drunk. His fingers came up to the blinds and parted them a little and he peered out, and then Joel went rigid. The voices continued outside, but Ellie wasn't listening; her eyes were stuck on Joel.

He stared out of the window, hand still held up to the blinds. And then his jaw clenched and he bit his bottom lip and Joel was no longer sullen. Joel's unresponsive, lagging madness was replaced by a rage that Ellie hadn't seen in him before.

" _You'd just come after her."_

Joel reached into his jeans and pulled out his revolver and, face contorted into a mixture of emotions that Ellie couldn't tell apart, made for the door. His steps were huge and thundering and the floor creaked beneath them, but she couldn't hear their voices, she couldn't tell if they could hear. But she ran at the door quickly, jumping in front of Joel.  _It's suicide to go out there, there's too many of them. They'll kill you._

"What the fuck is wrong with you, Joel?"

Joel didn't stop; he ran at Ellie, his shoulder taking her in the face. Ellie fell backwards, slamming her head hard against the door frame. She felt the skin break and the blood trickle down her neck. For a few moments there was silence and stars in her eyes and everything seemed blurry.  _He hit me. Joel hit me._ Ellie was sore and frightened and she wanted to be away from Joel. She didn't want to look at that angry face, but she did. She looked up.

Joel looked terrified. "E-Ellie… I'm – I'm so sorry. It was…"

"Shut up," she said and struggled to her feet. Joel rushed over to her.

"Ellie I'm so sorry. It was –"

" _Shut up_ ," she repeated and pushed him away from her. She listened and heard the sound of the vehicle outside moving away.  _The hunters have gone and I still don't feel safe._ It was only now that she looked at Joel and she saw him for what he was: sad. His eyes were red and had huge bags underneath them, patchy with veins. His age was drawn and gaunt, his cheekbones sharp and high. His lips were shrivelled and dry.

"What the hell is wrong with you Joel?"

He shook his head and muttered an apology, and then another. And then more. And then Joel, the man who had guided Ellie through ice and death and blood, began to cry.

* * *

The sun had sunk down into the trees but its light was still streaming through. Ellie's stomach groaned at her, though it wouldn't be much longer until the deer was ready. It was in a pot she had used before in the kitchen stewing on a fire she'd lit outside. The light made it difficult to see the light from the fire, and yet it was dark enough to hide the smoke that it produced. She'd put it off for a long time, making up the time by fully skinning the deer. Usually, that was Joel's job, but he was still upstairs. Occasionally she heard him mutter something. She had asked him to come downstairs at first but he hadn't replied, he'd just sat there, upstairs.

The experience earlier had shaken her truly; it had terrified her and worried her and made her more upset than she'd been in a long time.

_David._

Every time she thought about how upset she'd been in the past she was taken back to that night. The snow so cold, biting at her nose and her face, and him, slashing with his machine, hunting her like a dog in the restaurant. Her eyes almost welled up at the thought, but she kept them at bay by taking in a deep breath over the fire. The smell from the deer was a great relief. Around the fire fluttered moths and their far more enjoyable cousins, fireflies. She smiled when she saw them, and wondered briefly what Marlene was still doing, if she was still alive. For some reason, Ellie could still remember her voice, long after she'd forgotten Tess's and Riley's, even her own mother's. Sometimes she struggled to remember what her mother looked like.  _Mom._ There wasn't a day that went by that she didn't miss her, and today she'd found herself missing her a lot. She wondered if her mother would have liked Joel, and then she pushed the thought from her mind, rejecting it. The deer was roasting well in the pot, it had turned a nice brown colour. She ran back inside and looked through the drawers, most of them had been stripped bare, searching for a fork or a knife was a lost cause, but she had some hope that she'd find a spoon – and she did. People always took forks and knives, though she didn't really understand why.  _My switchblade saves my life every day, but a knife and fork wouldn't do shit to a hunter._

She spooned out a small chunk of deer and bit into it at once. It was dry and hard, but it was food.  _Still better than fucking rabbit._ When she began to chew, there was some moisture released that was built up inside.

"Mind if I join you?"

Joel was standing in the doorway, she hadn't heard him come down. She nodded once.

He sat down opposite her, the fire and the pot between them. "I'm gonna go in and eat this," she said and made to stand and go inside, but Joel motioned to grab her and she flinched. He pulled his hand back at once.

"I'm sorry. Just, stay. I wanna talk to you."

"About?" She wasn't angry at Joel, exactly. She wasn't sure what she felt. She was worried for him, she was a little scared  _of_ him, but she wouldn't – couldn't – leave him.  _It was an accident. Maybe._

"I wanna explain this to you, Ellie."

She sat back down and crossed her legs. "I'm listening."

Joel bit his dry bottom lip and looked away into the forest. The only sound was the clicking of crickets from deep within the forest and the sound of the fire crackling between them, the wood blackening and burning. She'd collected it herself from around the cabin, unwilling to stray too far in case the hunters she'd seen before were still around the area, despite what they said.

"On the night the world went to hell, I came home and got Sarah. She was already awake, downstairs. I came in the house through the back door and she was just standing there… she looked so  _scared_. I'll never forget that look on her face." He rubbed his forehead with his hand. The old Joel was back now, it seemed. She wondered if Joel knew when there was a difference. "My neighbour came in, he'd been turned. I shot him in front of her and then we left, Tommy arrived in the car. We saw the headlights flashing all around the front room. So we ran out and got in the car, and then we drove. On the way there… things were bad. Houses were burning, farms. People were screamin' for help, there was a family at the side of the road. I keep seeing them on that goddamn hill, shoutin' for us to stop for them. But we didn't, we pushed on. We had to. I didn't know what the hell was goin' on, I didn't wanna stop for 'em."

Ellie held her spoon out and Joel smiled and took it, shovelling up a piece of deer and lifting it off the spoon with his other hand. He looked at it for a few seconds and then bit into it, closing his eyes and throwing his head back a little. Ellie smiled.

"We tried to make our way to the highway but everyone else had made the same move, and then a wave of 'em came at us from the forest. They all had hospital robes on, every one of 'em. Heh, I thought I'd forgotten that. Funny the things you remember when you sit down to tell the story."

Joel shovelled up another piece of deer and swallowed it, handed the spoon back to Ellie. She just held it there in her hands, not eating anymore. Just waiting for him to keep going. She thought she knew where the story was going, but she couldn't be sure. All she knew about Sarah's death was that she'd been shot, and infected don't have guns.

"We drove off back into town. We wanted to go through it, I don't remember what for. Maybe we just wanted to get out the other side, find another route. One thing led to another, a gas station blew up and the car got thrown to hell. Sarah hurt her leg and I had to carry her, I gave Tommy my gun. He kept them at bay whilst we charged on through the town… There was so many people, more than I'd ever seen in town at once. It's quite a small town, near the outskirts. I don't think it's far from here at all, not that I want to go there. I think it's probably the last place I'd wanna go.

"And all these people. Some of 'em were infected, some of 'em were dead, most of them were just dead people walking around, a small town of people that wouldn't live through the first night. Not many people did. Maybe they were the lucky ones, not leavin' the rest of us behind – ah, I dunno. We turned into an alley but they were comin' over the fence, so we ran through a bar. So many of them… trying to push down the door. Tommy said he'd hold them off. I thought that was him. I thought,  _I'm gonna leave here with Sarah and this'll be the last time I ever see him again._ He was dying for Sarah."

Joel had to pause again. A tear slid down his check, its wetness illuminated by the fire. He wiped it away with the back of his hand.

"We got out of town, made our way down this little lane that led up to the motorway. There was an ambulance down the hill, crashed, and as we made our way past it I heard 'em coming up behind us. Infected, but I couldn't see them. I ran away from them and just at the moment where we thought we'd reached the end, shots rang out and I heard it fall dead behind us, roll down the hill. I looked around and for a second thought,  _Tommy_ , but it wasn't. The guy had a rifle, a military man, maybe the national guard or somethin'. I made to move towards him, saying I thought Sarah's leg was broken…"

Joel sighed deeply. "Twenty years later I can still hear myself saying that to him, that we weren't…  _sick._ He warned us, stay back, and he contacted someone on the radio. I heard murmurs, I couldn't make out what the guy said. He was twenty feet away and warned me not to come any closer. He had the gun. But I remember the response.

" _Sir, there's a little girl. But – yes, sir._  And then he sighed and he raised his gun. He  _sighed_  like he was being asked to tidy up things that weren't his mess in the first place. And I said, "please, we've just been through hell", and the torchlight came up with the gun. I tried to back off, Ellie. I tried to run, and then the shots rang out and we fell… He came up to me and he pointed the gun right in my face. I begged him not to hurt us, and then a shot went out, and he fell."

"And all my hope came back. My hope that I could get us all to safety. Tommy had shot him in the head and now we could get back." Joel was silent.

"It wasn't Tommy?"

"No, it was Tommy. That it was… but it was Sarah. She was crying a few feet away, though it took me a sec to hear it. It was Tommy that noticed first. The bullet was so deep."

Tears were in Ellie's eyes. She had never known Sarah but she wanted nothing more than for her to have lived, to make it out. Maybe she'd be here with them both right now. All the memories of earlier were gone, lost when Joel and Sarah fell apart on that goddamn hill.

"The man that shot her, Ellie. He was wearing a gas mask and a helmet and army outfit."

 _Oh._ Her head came up a little in understanding.  _The men we saw today._

"The men that we saw today, they weren't hunters?"

"I don't know what they were. They could've been hunters who scavenged the clothes, but they didn't seem it to me. I don't remember much of it. Recently, my head's been all over the place. I'm sorry, baby girl. I really am. When I saw you looking at me from the floor you just – you looked so scared. It was all a blur until then and it was all a blur after, but I remember it. I am sorry. It was the masks and the voices that came out from them. Hell, they even had the same damn guns. I lost it, and I promise you now that it will not happen again. I don't much know what the hell is going on with my head these days but I will never hurt you."

Ellie nodded hard a few times and brushed away some residual tears. "I didn't know."

"And you were right to stop me. I'd have just… died, and then they'd have found you. I just lost myself."

"It's not the first time. It's the worse but it's not the first."

Joel gave one long nod and looked away into the forest again. He wasn't looking for anything in particular, no listening, just looking away. Thinking about something.

"Do you wanna, like, talk about it or something?"

Joel shook his head and smiled at her, a real smile. "Nah. It's me that has to deal with it."

"A lot's happened, Joel. Tommy…" Joel seemed to wince at the mention of his name. It was alright when he said it, but coming from someone else it probably felt like the memory was attacking him, the memory of Tommy's death. She knew the feeling with her mom. Never with Riley; few people knew her by name, and even then they didn't mention her afterwards. Even Joel hadn't asked about her. One day she'd mention her, to let Joel know it was okay too. Maybe, on some level, Ellie wanted to talk about her. "I'm here for you."

"How about we both get some sleep?"

"Good idea."

She hoped Joel would still be like this in the morning, his usual self. She thought he would; the sun was gone but the sky was a thick red, red as blood, as fire. The moon was up too, she could see it just around the other side of the house. She wanted to sleep through the night, but mostly she wanted Joel to; a sleep would do him good. Maybe it would do both of them good.

"We have a long day ahead tomorrow, we've gotta get out of here. Find somewhere new to go. Maybe head into one of the towns nearby." He paused, unsure of what he'd said. "One of them," he repeated. "Preferably one of them I don't recognise. There's a town not far from here if I remember right."

On some level maybe Joel wanted to go back to his hometown as much as she wanted to talk about Riley; on that unmentionable level of existence where things existed but weren't acknowledged. Unspoken truths and all. It was Joel that had led them this way to this part of Texas, all his directions. There had been signs all the way here telling them the main road into Texas was one way, but Joel had been adamant not to follow them – they led to bandits camping on the road. The bandits they dealt with along the way were unorganised and undisciplined; they hadn't been huge obstacles. Ellie had the feeling that the hunters they'd met today weren't going to be as easily outmanoeuvred.

Joel put a wet towel over the fire and it died instantly, and then brought the pot in. They both ate the remainder of the deer inside the pot and then Joel carried the carcass out into the woods a little so that animals like coyotes wouldn't try to get into the house in the night, attracted by the smell. That said, wild animals rarely came near people anymore, fearing them to be infected.

"Still," Joel explained, "if they're hungry enough and come across what they think are a dead deer and two dead people, they might just feel brave."

She expected Joel to stay awake for a long time, but he didn't. The soft sound of his snoring came a few minutes after they'd both lain down. Upstairs, of course, in case someone appeared to peak in one of the downstairs windows and see them both. Joel had managed to lock the door a few days before, and there was still a bolt attached to the back door, so they'd hear if someone broke in. Joel was a light sleeper anyway.

The sun was fully down, no longer could Ellie see its light, though she could still feel its warmth. Though the sun was down, Ellie's eyes were open, and they stayed open for a long, long time.


	13. Chapter 13

**Author's Note:** Lucky number 13! But will it be lucky for Joel and Ellie? You're just gonna have to wait and see. Really pretty amazed that I'm managing to churn out such big chapter so quickly, although I will say that I  _really_ struggled with this chapter. There were some sentences I just wrote over and over because they didn't seem right. So, yeah. The chapter is pretty big but there aren't any dull parts; it's been a while again since you got some action, so I resolved last night to give you some. Follow and favourite, leave me a review telling me what you liked, what you didn't like. They really do keep me writing more. So, thanks for reading this far! It's strange to think how far the two of them have come in the space of just two chapters, isn't it?

* * *

**ELLIE**

* * *

"Ellie, Ellie you gotta wake up."

"Joel? What is it?"

"Come on, we gotta go."

She scrambled to her feet and grabbed her bag, still not understanding, but even over the rustle of her bags and the groans from the floor below, she could hear the clicking and the banging, the screaming that had replaced the chirp of crickets from the forest. Joel pushed her bow and the quiver full of arrows into her hands after she'd pulled her backpack on.

"How did they find us?" she whispered. Even though she kept her voice low they seemed to moan and scream louder, and the clicking.  _Oh fuck, the clicking._

"I dunno, maybe they were attracted by the deer and we were snorin', maybe they're just naturally against the idea of a locked cabin in the woods."

Joel had his rifle out, walking ahead of Ellie. She followed him closely, keeping an arrow on the string. Her hands weren't as steady as she would usually favour to have a decent shot.  _It's been so long since we saw infected, I almost forgot what they were like. I almost forgot that sickening noise._ It had been a long time, weeks in fact.

First Joel swept the landing area, none inside; it seemed they  _were_ firmly trapped outside, which would be alright until they're shouting attracted the hunters, and then they dealt with the infected and came inside for Ellie and Joel. Slowly they moved down the stairs, each foot placed lightly on each step… but still they creaked under their weight – great, high creaks that seemed to stretch out. And with every creak their screams from outside grew in intensity and pitch and volume. There were so many of them; six, maybe seven. She couldn't tell.

They were behind the wooden walls, but one of them was at the window. Face pressed up against the glass, twisted and broken, gnarled. The fungus had grown out from the top of its head and around, giving it the appearance of some hideously mutated haircut.

"They're wearing army uniforms."

"I think most of the infected around these parts will be." He saw the confused look on Ellie's face, came in closer to her to continue. They were banging so hard on the walls, they could hear them, they could smell them… "We saw those guys, so it's a good bet they've got some form of base, more likely a camp. Eventually all the big camps turn to hell."

"Someone leaves a door open."

"A mistake we luckily did not make."

Their screams were all they could hear, and the banging. Their fists bet so hard against the wooden walls they must have been bleeding, full of splinters from the rough wood. When they'd first got to the cabin Joel hadn't said much, but he'd muttered that the cabin looked as though it was built recently. The wood was low quality, and eventually, it would break.

"They're gonna break down the walls," Ellie said. Her hand was shaking less now, but inside she felt as though she was back in Wyoming in the middle of winter.

"I know," he said. His head was darting around the room in every direction, looking for a way out, looking for an escape. "We need to get out."

"Joel, there's too many of them."

Ellie saw Joel move and before she had blinked he had one of her arrows out of her quiver. He rammed it hard through a gap in two slants of wood and into one of the infected's head. And again, and again. Three of them slumped, dead, before the arrow broke, and then more fell in line, taking their place.

Joel put his hands behind his head and closed his eyes hard in deep thought. He was thinking, and Ellie was trying too. Thoughts and ideas swam through her head, but nothing that stuck, nothing that would work.  _I need a plan, what can we do?_ She considered shooting their way through them, but it wouldn't work – there were too many. Even if, imagine they killed all the infected, made their way out and got chased down by hunters attracted by the gunshots, like moths to a flame.  _What to do, what to do?_

"If we run the runners'll see us and the clickers'll hear us and we'll be done."

And then Joel's head jerked up and he stared at the ceiling.  _He's thought of something._

"Joel? What is it?"

Slowly, he looked back to Ellie. "We gotta burn the cabin down. The lights'll distract the runners and the noises will keep the clickers. We go slow."

"They'll still see us, some of them will follow us."

"Only a few," he said quickly. "It's better than the alternative. If the hunters decide to come check it… then, well, we can cross the bridge when we get to it."

Ellie considered it for a moment, and then nodded. Joel was off in a flash; he had his hand in his backpack before Ellie knew it, producing the two bottles that Joel kept alcohol in. He unscrewed the cap from one and moved into the kitchen, letting the alcohol spill over the floor. He trailed a line of it from the kitchen to the foot of the stairs, right in front of the door out.

"When I light this there's no going back." He sat the other plastic bottle down at the end of the trail and then drew back the loose fabric at the front window, glancing out and then letting it drop again. It was rotted in places, the dark green gone black. "There's three of them out there, one clicker and two runners.

"Hold on," Ellie said.  _Let's hope this works._ She stepped over the alcohol trail and into the kitchen and then she began to scream, and sing too. " _Oooooh saaay can you seeeeeee, by the dawn's early liiiiiight, what so proudly once shone… bla la la la la la la la,"_ she sang, tunelessly. Ellie was a terrible singer. She improvised a few more of the lines and then came back through.

Joel looked at her, smiling. He went a little closer to her, dropping his voice to a whisper, and said, "Well, two things. One, you are a truly terrible singer. Terrible. Just awful. Two, it worked, the clicker moved 'round back. The runners are still there."

"Two things," she said, mocking him. "One, fuck you. Two, maybe you should do the singing next time."

Quietly, he laughed. "Maybe sometime. Are you ready?" She nodded. "Let's do this."

Ellie moved up to the door and put her hand on the bolt.  _Breathe, Ellie. Breathe._

First he slung his rifle over his shoulder. A quick nod, and then he lit the paper in his hand, and dropped it onto the stream of alcohol. The bolt unlatched quick, clicking against the door. The door opened and the warm summer air streamed over her face, but there was no time to relish it. Joel pushed her again, this time with the full intention to get them out of there quick. Out into the warm open air they went, and the two runners were on them. Joel slammed his rifle into the first runner's grey face. The other jumped on his back, trying to bite at him, but he arched his back and it struggled, even more so when Ellie stuck her switchblade through the back of its neck.

It fell off Ellie, and then she felt the heat, and she saw the fire. Ellie and Joel were lifted off their feet and thrown, and when she thought they should have landed, they didn't; they kept going and she saw the hill. She landed and tumbled some more. Another runner came at her, and she kicked at it, trying to keep it at bay. To the side of her Joel was lying unconscious, though his gun was so close. She kicked the infected in the jaw and it staggered back. As it did she scattered forward, grabbing the gun and – as it came for her again – slugged it in the face. When it fell again, she stood and slammed it again. And again. And again. Hot blood sprayed against her face, but she kept hitting it. Hands touched her shoulders. She swung the rifle around, but his other hand caught it.

"Come on, baby girl, we gotta go."

The bow and quiver were nowhere to be seen on the grass around them.  _Shit, I've left them up there._ Joel was shaking his head. "We have to leave them. Here." He handed her his revolver and she opened up the cylinder in the middle.  _Five bullets, better make them count if we need them… Come on, Ellie. Don't be morbid, let's hope it won't come to that._

They moved through the bushes, thickets of leaves hiding them.

"I'd hoped for a little Texas moonlight to guide us but it looks like we'll have to do without it." Above, the clouds had hidden the moon, though you could still see the outline from where it was, so bright and silver. "Or maybe not. Get down."

Yellow lights branched out through the undergrowth as they ducked down behind a large bush. It illuminated the red berries that hung from it. Ellie almost considered eating one of them, but even her stomach gave a yelp at the thought. No doubt they were poisonous. Everything was damn poisonous in Texas.

 _Company._ Headlights continued up the road that they were hiding off of, no doubt off to investigate the fire. Ellie looked back and she could see the smoke, reflecting red from the fire raging below, above the trees.  _Has it spread to the trees?_ There was no way that  _that_ was coming from just the cabin.  _It looks like the sky is on fire._

"They've gone past, let's keep going."

They ran through the grass, keeping close to the road – but not too close. Always behind hedges and bushes, staying low. The revolver stayed in Ellie's hand and Joel didn't let his rifle down, his eyes was always staring down its iron sight, clearing the road ahead as they went.

"They can't be based too far away, they got here real quick."

"What if they heard they infected and – and that's what brought them here?"

"Nah I doubt it. It wasn't nearly loud enough. I'm sure it was the fire."

"If they're based this way, shouldn't we head in the opposite direction?"

"They must be camped in my hometown, or near it. The town itself is too big to fortify, too many hills. No doubt they've probably tried."

"So where are we going?" Her foot got trapped in a vine and she tugged at it, cutting her hands on the thorns she couldn't see in the dark. "Son of a bitch," she muttered.

Joel looked back just in time to see her slice it away with her switchblade and then continue on, catching up with him quickly. "I honestly don't know, Ellie. Let's just keep going, see what the first thing we see is."

* * *

First they saw the fence, at the top nails and coiled copper twisted into makeshift barbs. Beyond the fence was the town that Ellie knew immediately was the one Joel had grown up in. She didn't know from the landscape; he had never described it to her much, only scarce parts and mentions of shops. Ellie recognised it from the look on his face. For the first time since they'd tumbled down that hill, Joel lowered his gun. He checked left and right before approaching the fence, and she did the same – checking for patrols – but when they saw nothing they kept on going up. Joel pressed one of his hands against the fence, and his face too, not even worrying that it could be electrified.

"Ellie, I'd like you to meet an old friend of mine. This here is my hometown."

"Does it have a name?"

"I'm not sure," he said. "We ain't seen each other in about eighteen years. Come on, let's keep heading around the fence, see if we come across something." With a glance upwards, he added, "No way in hell are we getting over that."

Naturally, he was right. The fence was too tall for Joel to boost her up, and even if he could, she'd cut herself worse than she did in the last half hour it took them to get out of the forest, not that they had any real way of measuring the time. The moon still hadn't emerged and she doubted the sun would be up for a long while yet. Maybe one day Joel could fix that damn watch of his.

As they moved around the fence Ellie took some time to look inside. What she noticed mostly was that she couldn't notice anything; the lights were all out. Not so much as a sidelight to brighten the road for hunters to move in and out of.

"Joel, does Texas have any quarantine zones?"

He seemed to think about the answer before he gave it, but then it came all the same. "We heard stories that there was one set up in Dallas, but I never went there. No doubt it's ruined by now, but you never know."

It occurred to Ellie that she didn't know why Joel had ended up in Boston and Tommy in Wyoming; she wouldn't ask about Tommy ( _Too soon_ ), but surely asking him was a valid question. There was still a sort of reservation between the two of them; no matter how much she tried, no matter how much she missed the old Joel that she by all accounts had in front of her, there was still some invisible wedge that she couldn't get past. "How did you get all the way from here to Boston?"

"It's a long story," he said, sighing. Ellie was going to give up, she wouldn't prod any further, he didn't want to talk about it, when – "But I suppose we've got a lot of walking to do. What happened was Tommy and I made our way east, grouped up with some old friends of Tommy. Food was still around back then, people were fighting over it, sure, but you weren't surprised when you found it in a store, you were just happy with it. So we fought the good fight for as long as we could, but after seven or eight weeks, things got bad. People were fighting over what to do, some people were willing to do anything to survive. It got pretty heated, and loud. A lot of shots were fired. People on both sides were lost, good men and bad."

"Who won in the end – the good guys or the bad guys?"

"The survivors." His voice was chocked with regret. Still, it made her happy that he was talking about it to her. She really liked listening to him talk.

"What happened then?"

"Tommy and I decided to leave after a while. It was either that or one morning we just didn't wake up. Some of the men had turned to cannibalism, even then. It was the best time to be a savage, I'll tell you that." He turned at that moment and saw the look on her face; her mouth slightly ajar, her eyes tensed. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean'ta bring any of that stuff up."

"It's fine."

"We had to keep going. We carved our way further east, always hearing that there was a  _safe place_  east. We kept going and going."

"What happened when you reached the east?"

"People told us that the safe place was in the west."

Back in the quarantine zone, that talk was popular. Whenever food was scarce ( _Which was a lot_ ) Ellie would hear talk about how in  _other_ quarantine zones, they had plenty of food. That it was only Boston that was being this way, because the guards were dicks.  _Well, that was true. The guards were dicks._ Glance at them the wrong way and they would beat you, sometimes kill you.

Static from a radio of some sort sounded out ahead of them; to their right they still had the cover of some trees and they moved into them quickly. Joel moved his head up a little, watching.

"What is it?" she whispered.

"A guard tower," he replied. "There." His hand hovered in the air; she followed his finger up and at first didn't see what he was indicating, but then she did. The shape was just visible in the darkness, and moving forms at the top that were clearly guards.

"Why are they guarding this? There's nothing here, at all. No offense."

"None taken. My guess is they've got a base within the town. You find that sometimes – they start off with big hopes and try to protect the entire town, but then realise too late it's too big. You have a hundred exits to secure, there's a much bigger chance of someone leaving  _one_ of 'em open, compared to a base where you've got ten, so they downsize. Somewhere in here, there'll be walls set up within the fence."

"A base within a base."

"Exactly. Problem is, it means that the main town is probably crawling with infected." His head craned around to have a look in the town again, and Ellie looked too, though they couldn't even see in shapes moving in the darkness; if there  _were_ infected inside, they couldn't see them.

"What'll we do?"

Ellie knew what Joel's answer would be; he wouldn't risk being discovered by a guard tower just to go into an old broken town filled with infected. As much as a part of her wanted to go, maybe it wasn't worth it. They'd keep going, past the tower and out, find another little cabin. Somewhere to set up camp, stay in one place for a while.

"We take out the guards in the tower and take their radios, and head on in."

She stared at him for a few seconds before the weight of his words dawned on her.  _Joel wouldn't usually take a risk like that, not when there's nothing to gain. We aren't trying to get to anything, we aren't trying to find someone. This is a bad idea. Tell him that, Ellie._

But despite all of her thoughts, all of her worries, she trusted him. "Okay."

"Okay. Let's go."

Getting to the bottom of the guard tower was no problem; there were no spotlights to go around, it was nothing like sneaking out of Philadelphia with Henry and Sam.  _If Joel's right, the real defences will be outside the base that's inside this base._ She wondered if Tommy had learned the lesson to make a small, defensible town from Joel, or if they'd both learned it from someone else.  _Not that it worked out too well for Tommy's town._

Joel decided to go up himself, as he'd first told her in some form of sign language that had proven too difficult to decipher, and then just resorted to whispering it in her ear. Above, the radio still crackled. She could footsteps above.  _Tell him you don't want to, Ellie._

"Joel, I don't like this."

He nodded. "We don't have to go inside if you don't want to."

"It's not that, it's the tower. What if the radio is  _on_? What if they are called? What if there's too many of them up there? We saw two, maybe three, but…"

"If there were another way..." He looked at her face and she looked back at him, and then he took his foot off the first rung. "Okay. We'll keep headed around the fence and look for another way in."  _That's the Joel I know._

Above them they heard one of the guards laugh; they were talking, that much was obvious, but they were so high up that their words were almost completely out of earshot. The laugh was booming, however, and Ellie figured that the clickers up by the cabin probably heard it. Foolishly she looked back again to see if she could still see the fire – and she could. The thought came to her, completely unbidden.  _What if we can climb up the trees and jump over the fence?_ She inspected the idea herself without airing it whilst they continue around the perimeter, and then discarded it soon after. They'd break their legs on the jump down.

It felt like they had been walking for so long because of how thick the growth under their feet was, but they hadn't been. Not as long as they'd walked in the past. They kept going, on and on and on, until they saw it.  _Damn it, we've been walking in circles._

But they hadn't been. "Is that a different tower?"

"Yep," Joel said. "And it looks like it's empty."

"Do you think they only occupied the one tower?"

"It could be that those men went up there to keep watch on their friends they sent to have a look at our fire, which would mean we don't have much to worry about with this one."

Luckily, they did not. The tower was empty. They climbed it together to have a look from above; they could see the full town and, stretching off into the distance, they could see the other guard towers. The fence was built in a circle around the town, eight or nine towers spread evenly around.

"Up there," Joel said, pointing, "is the area they used for farming. There were a lot of farms back then, all up there. Richmond farm, the Langley farm." Ellie wondered if any of the families that had once run them were still alive. She doubted it; they would have left the town and Texas for better horizons – or, at least,  _new_ horizons – long ago. "And if you look  _there_ ," he pointed, "we have the base within a base."

Joel was right; the fences, however, were not fences. Inside they had erected what looks like a huge wall of concrete, a minimum of fifty feet high. It was a mighty fortress, not like anything Ellie had ever seen before. There were spotlights there; she wondered now how she could have missed them in the first place.

"Those lights look like that big eye of fire from  _The Lords of the Rings_ ," Joel said.

"The what of the whats?"

"Nothing."

"Where will we go?"

"You see there? That's a bunch of stores. If we go there, might be we could get some alcohol. It's doubtful but anything will do. We used up all of ours setting that fire." Ellie glanced back; she could see it fully now – it was raging back the way, consuming the path that they had taken to get  _to_ the cabin. No doubt the fire was all around that little lake now.  _Now it'll be covered in ash._ She sighed quietly.

"And after that?"

"My hope is that we could get a car, but I'm not holding out for that much. For now, let's just keep our sights on the alcohol." He laughed a little. "It's strange how things change, Ellie. Just over twenty years ago I'd have been saying the same thing, but things were a bit different."

"How were they different?"

He shrugged. "It'd be looking for alcohol to have a barbecue for the neighbours. Kids running around, the smell of sausages and chicken." He took a deep breath in. "Now we just need it to see where it gets us, a little drab to set a fire every night if it gets cold."

"It gets cold in Texas?"

"Naw, not very much, but you never know. You can need fire for – all kinds of things."

Ellie had the distinct impression that Joel was looking for any excuse to head on in there, and she didn't want to deny that to him. In all honesty, she secretly wanted nothing more than for them to head up to where Joel had once lived.  _I want to sleep in a bed again, I want to stay somewhere for more than a few nights._ But life never drove Ellie to the places she wanted to go.

"Let's go then," she said.

He nodded, and slid down the ladder first. She climbed down, her hands still sore and wet from the blood. It was a long climb, and each time her hand grabbed onto a rung, her hands screamed at her. When she got to the bottom, she asked Joel if she could wash them and he gave her the last bottle of water he had. Though he didn't explicitly state it as such, she'd been keeping tabs on what remained.  _Something else to keep an eye out for inside._

They found that the fence wasn't really locked; there was a bolt, but Joel pushed his hand through the gate, with some difficulty, and unclipped it; the chains clattered to the floor and they pushed open the gates. They closed them, but didn't lock them. For some reason, Ellie picked up the chain – it was light and easily carried, so she stuck it in her backpack quickly. Joel noticed but didn't comment on it.

Together, they made their way into the town where ghosts lurked. In the distance the spotlights were visible, vague streaks of light. Nobody had any hope of seeing them in the dark, even with binoculars – it was too far away, the spotlights were three, maybe four miles in the distance.

Even so, Ellie held onto her revolver tightly, wishing she had her bow.

_I have Joel._

She only wished more comfort grew from that fact than what actually came.


	14. Chapter 14

**Author's Note:** Hello! So I'm back after a delay of a few days (apologies!). This chapter took some planning and really launches the story forward. It's the first Joel chapter in a little while, because I wanted you all to see from Ellie's perspective how his mind was unraveling a little, and now you get to see it from Joel's, which is different. You'll see how it plays out, I suppose, and I just hope that you enjoy it. I really did enjoy writing it, as much as I love writing Ellie, I like Joel too; he's very aware of what's going on, he's trying to deal with his own issues, and he's trying to reconcile himself to this teenage girl. It's very interesting to explore that. Unfortunately I don't think this chapter is funny. At least, I didn't think it was when I was writing it. Joel's in a much darker place than Ellie is right now, so her chapters are where most of the humour comes from now. As for what the next chapter will be, I'm really not sure. I'm toying with a couple of different ideas right now. I'll let you know in the next chapter, I suppose. In any case,  _enjoy_! Read and review, follow and favourite if you haven't done so already!

* * *

**JOEL**

* * *

_How can a place be so different, and so familiar?_

They'd passed the fence twenty minutes or so ago and were walking around the backstreets of Joel's hometown. Its name kept summoned by his mind, crying it out against his will, and he tried to forget it.  _Its name don't mean nothing anymore, it's just another dead town_ , he thought. And that it was – more dead than most. With the big cities you couldn't help but shake the feeling that people had just abandoned it, left them to the grass and the weeds. But with the smaller ones, you knew that the world had taken everything from them.

Joel peered inside the window of a shop he'd only visited a few times before – the stock was kept below ground, but you paid on the top floor, right before you left. Inside it didn't look like much; an empty checkout behind a glass window, with a slider where you'd give them money. It was a post office too. That's what he'd bought – stamps.

"Come on," he whispered, "there's an exit 'round back. Maybe we'll have more luck there."

They hadn't said anything above the level of a whisper since they got into town. Maybe Ellie had the same hesitation he did; there was something not right about it. In the distance sometimes they heard noises, but it didn't seem like small noises close up; it was big noises, far away.

Two cars lay sprawled at ridiculous angles, blocking the lane that would take them around the back of the store.

"That was one bad crash," Joel said.

"You saw it?"

"No, but I can see it now." He looked inside the blackened car and saw nothing but a skeleton, coated in thick dust and ash. They were never white like you used to see them on television, they were always grimy, dirty. The arm bone was stuck in a worse angle than the cars were.  _Infected probably tried to pull him out, eat him, and only got the hand._

"Will we go around?"

"It'd take too much time. Let's just go over the car."

Joel put his right foot on the left wheel of the car, a wheel that had gone flat a long time ago. Then, once he was on the bonnet of the car, he helped Ellie up. They jumped down on the other side and made their way down the alley. Once, rats would have scattered around their feet. Now, nothing.

Usually Joel wasn't one for making those types of comparisons but now they weighed heavy on his mind. What used to be, and what remained. The door there was locked too, but it had a real lock, one that Joel could use. He took a shiv that he'd crafted earlier, back in the cabin, and jammed it into the lock, raking and raking. A click came from inside the lock and he pulled out the now-broken shiv, dropping it to the ground. The door gave way easily when he turned the lock, and the metal hinges scream at being put to use after such a long, long rest. He opened the door slower. "Easy does it," he said. Ellie nodded.

He pointed his rifle in the dark room, looking around. From behind, a beam of light broke the darkness and showed the room; Joel moved in first, slowly, Ellie following with her torch. Joel expected the floor to be littered with envelopes and scattered stamps; empty packets strewn across the floor as if by a great wind. Instead, the floor was clean. The ropes that separated the aisles to the glass teller were still standing, held up by metal sticks, flimsy things that Sarah use to duck under and back. He remembered her falling once, laughing whilst she did it.

"It's so clean," Ellie said, eyes apart in wonder.

"That it is. The door was locked, the cars blockin' the path, no doubt people hadn't found their way in here."

"Wow. Do you think there's stuff to eat?"

"There was a little shop downstairs, so there might be." Ellie moved towards the door. "Let me go first." There was something Joel didn't like about the place, and in the darkness it felt all the more sinister. The still silence was unnerving too, and Joel's ears were listening for any excuse to get them out of there.

_Why did we even come in?_

" _To get away from the demons outside, Joel," he heard and swung his rifle around – there was a man standing there, Joel almost fired, and then he saw the man's mauled face; such pale death there. His neck was gargling. Joel's rifle shook in his hands. "You shouldn't have come back here, Joel."_

"Joel, are you okay?" And then Tommy was gone.

"Yeah, I'm fine Ellie," he said. "Just thought I saw something." Joel moved the slider on his chest onto the  **on**  position, the torch flickering into a solid beam, streaking the doorway ahead with yellow light. The door frame was black with rot and damp, and around the wet corners, snugly sitting, was moss.  _Moss?_ It was a relief to see moss in the world and not the creeping roots of the cordyceps, he had to admit.

He shone the light further into the room as he walked towards it, the darkness so empty that at first it simply swallowed the light whole. Behind him he could hear Ellie's breathing; slow, deliberate.  _She's trying to calm herself._ He wanted to say something, but there was nothing he could say. His mind flashed back to pushing her, to punching her, slapping her. He didn't remember what he did. He only remembered that he hurt her and the guilt that panged and stung at him. He wanted to turn and apologise again, but there was no need. Not right now.  _Later, Joel. Stay focused god dammit._

The stairs did not creak under their weight, a fact that surprised Joel to no end. They were metal, but they had not yet rusted beyond their function.

"All things considered," Joel said, "these stairs aren't doing half bad for not being touched in twenty years."

"I'll say."

There were no bodies on them, nor at the bottom of them. The store was downstairs, he could see it now – the shelves glistening with all colours of food, the unlit refrigerator glass glimmering in the distance from the torchlight.

"Holy shit, Joel!"

It was only then, when Ellie budged past him on the stairs, that the realisation of what he was seeing dawned on him. He couldn't help but lower his rifle to take it all in; crisps in boxes red and orange and blue.  _No doubt half the shit has gone hard, but it's there_ , he thought. He kept his eyes looking around but there was nothing in the room with him; surely some of the stock would be missing, at least. He wondered where the shop owner had gone, if he had fled from the town and not given an extra thought to his stock. Joel tried to remember his name, but it had slipped away from him sometime in the past two decades. He felt a little bad about that.

"I agree," he said, moving closer to some of the food supplies.

"What can I eat?"

"Look for rolled oats, and dried things. Dried tomatoes might be okay, out of the light and in the dark. It's pretty cold down here too."

She nodded and disappeared behind another aisle. It'd been so long since he'd seen shelves that were stocked. Most of the food wouldn't be edible anymore, but it was the sight that got him more than anything.

 _Sarah appeared from around the aisle. "Dad, are you gonna make me blueberry pancakes? You have to now that you're back. Look for pancakes, please?" Joel's head began to thump and scream at him. A slicing pain from the back of his skull, making his head twitch; he tried to steer his head into the pain, make it go away, but it stayed, gnawing…_ Make it stop _, he thought._ Sarah, leave me  **alone!**

"Joel? JOEL! Joel, what's wrong?"

He was sitting in a carpet of dust, back against an aisle. Old food strewn around him, fallen when he did. His torchlight pierced through the darkness ahead of him from his chest, cutting a circle of light on the aisle in front of him. Ellie's hand was on his shoulder.

"What the hell happened?"

He blinked hard; his head was still pounding. With effort and the aid of Ellie and the aisle behind him, he got to his feet. His legs quivered beneath him, struggling to hold him up. The knife at the back of his skull was gone – that he was thankful for.

"I don't know, just feelin' a bit dizzy. I wonder…" He trailed off and limped away from Ellie, inspecting the aisles. In slow motion his eyes trailed over the shelves; he lifted up packets of nuts and oats and seeds that were likely to be edible, shoving them into his bag as he went, and then found the white boxes we was looking for. Painkillers, though nothing as strong as he'd like. It amazed him, the names. Names and brands he hadn't seen in so long. He took a couple out of a white box, little blue pills, and swallowed them. For a moment he wondered if his throat was going to put up a fight, but then it gave way and they disappeared.

"What's that?"

Ellie was behind him – directly behind him. "They're painkillers. My head hurts."

"Drugs?"

"Yeah, medicine."

"Were they expensive?"

"No. They used to be pretty cheap. You could buy the weaker ones, and the stronger ones you had to go to a doctor for. Those you had to pay for."

"You had to pay for your health?" Ellie asked, eyes widened. His torchlight was spilling over the drug shelf, and the light caught her wide, glistening eyes. "That seems pretty shit. I thought things were good before the infected?"

"Things were –"

He stopped dead when he heard it; his head snapping towards the stairs. Voices came from outside, they were bouncing and echoing off the walls from the alley outside. A finger to his lips to tell Ellie to hush, and then he slowly moved towards them… listening.

" – I remember thinkin' we should get some engineers down here'ta check out this door, 'cause it's always been closed so long as I been doin' the patrols 'round here, and that's been a long time. That's how'a know it's open."

"If you say so."

Both of their accents were thick, southern accents; stronger than Joel's and Tommy's – the kind of southern dialect he associated with the deep, small country towns that (according to television and films) drove out black people with pitchforks. The religious zealots.

– Ora sliced into his mind, unbidden.  _"I'm alive, you demon."_

Their footsteps were above them now. He could hear the weight of their boots, big military ones, on the floor upstairs. He flicked his arm away, telling Ellie to hide. She did, carefully. Upstairs their slow, deliberate steps were making progress. Edging towards the stairs. Light, just like Joel's had, spilled out onto the staircase, and Joel backed off. His eyes moved quickly around the room, seeing nowhere real to hide. The aisles would not do.  _If they see us and they shoot us we're dead, if we shoot them there might be more out there._ He thought hard, but there was so little time to think…

He crouched and moved underneath the staircase. He'd barely gone under when yellow light came through the slants of metal that made up the stairs. Their boots clanked off the metal. When he lifted his head a little he could see them through the slants; only two of them. His hunting rifle was full.  _Can I risk shooting them? I need to wait and see if they see us._

"Jackpot shit!" said one of them, the one with the thicker accent. Not much else set the two apart – they both wore military uniforms. One wore brown boots, the other wore black. This one was the one with brown.

"There's so much shit down here," Black Boots said.

"Look, there's stuff fallen of that shelf – people have been in here, I'm tellin' you."

"Well, it don't look like they're here 'nymore." Black Boots moved into the room, looking at the food Joel had caused to drop on the floor. He remembered Sarah's head around the aisle, smiling at him... and he tried to push the thought away, out of his mind. "The lady's gonna be delighted with us," he said, his voice bursting with excitement. All over, he was twitching with anticipation.

It was then that the trepidation disappeared from Brown Boots and he moved down the remaining steps quickly. "Shit, she'll reward us, man!" They both began to laugh and giggle. Out of the corner of his eye, movement stirred.  _Ellie._ She was crouched behind the aisle farthest to the right; Joel could see her, and she could see him. One of the guards had their back to Joel, the other to Ellie.  _She's been looking through the aisles._

"What'll we do? We can't leave it, not with the door broken like that."

_Don't get Ellie involved, she might get hurt – but maybe it's a good idea._

" _It's a sound move, Joel. You get Brown Boots, I'll get Black."_

_Tess was crouched down behind the aisle on the far right. Joel nodded at her and she nodded back, bringing out a switchblade. Slowly and without creating any noise, he uncoiled himself from his prone position and came out of the darkness. Both were facing away from him, but they would see him at any moment. If Tess didn't get the other in time, shots would ring out._

_She was beside him then; black hair pulled back from her face, and her jacket was cream. It wouldn't be until later he thought of all the red blood it had soaked into its fibres, and the bullets that riddled her chest. With a nod from her, he grabbed Brown Boots around the neck and he started to struggle._ The soldier reached for something at his waist – a whistle or a weapon, it made no matter – so Joel applied more pressure, and then he tugged the man's neck one way, then violently twisted it the other; a cracking fissure came from the inside of his neck, and he fell to the floor.

With a similar thud, the other body sank down too, though with much more blood. Blood dripped from the ceiling from the initial spray, where it'd come from when she'd slit the other's neck.  _The neck is always a weak point in the armour_ , he thought. For a second, looking at Ellie, there was something strange there. Some unseen force wavering around her that he couldn't understand, and his head threatened to pound again.

"We should go," he said, beating his train of thought away, changing the topic.  _Did I put Ellie in danger?_

"Yeah."

"They'll send a patrol looking for these guys. Let's not be here when they find them." He took another glance around the room and then, jumping over the bodies, made a last round of the shelves. They found a few bottles of water, those went in Ellie's bag.  _No doubt they're all rank, but they should be fine to drink._ A few boxes of drugs were left on the shelves; he scanned through them and took what he thought could be useful, into his own bag. Back up the stairs. "You, uh, you did good there."

"Us or them." She said it almost too casually, in a way that worried him.

Rifle at the ready, he swept the alley outside with his eyes and the rifle before he let Ellie come out. There were no people, but at the edge of the Ellie was a tank; massive and dark green.  _There could be someone inside_. He handed his rifle to Ellie and whispered, "If someone is in that tank and comes up, shoot them." Quickly, he tried to shut the door, but the lock had broken.  _Shit_ , he thought and looked around for something –  _anything!_  – that would block the door. An old trashcan would have to do. Careful and quick was what he had to do; he gripped it by the rusted rungs and lifted. It wasn't heavy, but it wasn't by any accounts light either. He stuck it under the handle, as close to the door as possible, but it looked odd – it looked out of place.  _Anyone with eyes can see that it doesn't belong there._

"Can we go?" Ellie asked.

"Not yet," he replied and looked hurriedly for another. When he had three cans down along the door and to the wall beside it, he was satisfied. "Okay. Let's go." She handed him the rifle back and he eyed the tank; the mounted firing cannon, huge, hadn't swung around, trained its sights on them.  _Yet. There could still be someone in there._ The cars that it sat behind blocked their full view of the vehicle, but in his memory he still associated the top half with the bottom; the tracks that trailed in a loop, laying ruin to anything in its way. Joel glanced behind him; a brick wall.  _Why did I check? I knew it was a dead end._

"Get down Ellie," Joel said, and Ellie did. They crouched together, sticking close, and got down behind the car as quickly as they could. Up close Joel could see where the paint had flaked, in the places where it wasn't black with ash. Through the windows he could see the tank; sitting still. He was close enough now that he didn't have to worry much about the tank's mounted cannon, but surely anyone inside would have a machine gun.

"What'll we do?"

"On three I'll go over the car. You remember the next alley down that way?" He pointed left and she nodded. "That's where I'm going. If nothin' happens, if the tank don't move, wait ten seconds and then come after me. Count them slow, Ellie. Don't rush it."

At that moment he wondered where Ellie had learned to read and write and count; schools weren't around when she was younger. He made a mental note to ask her later and placed his hands on the bonnet of the car, pushing himself up and over. He made a sprint for the alleyway, and then a shout thundered at him.

"STOP WHERE YOU ARE, ON THE ORDERS OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT!"

Joel didn't stop; but they hadn't shouted until he was well past the tank – and this shout wasn't from the tank. He dived into the alley, shots rang out, battering and sparking against the walls to the side of him, and he sidled into cover behind a giant metal dumpsters. It must have held things inside, 'cause otherwise the thin aluminium would have been pierced by bullets.

 _FEDRA?_ Joel wondered.

"Identify yourself!"

He looked behind him; another dead end alley, on the floor were pieces of garbage, burst from a book. A few wrappers, a broken mirror.  _Mirror_ , he thought, lifting it. He angled it out and saw them coming; four of them, five of them, a sixth on a roof in the distance. They all wore military outfits, grenades hanging from their belts, and guns.  _Shit, shit. Did they see Ellie? They must have missed her._

There was no way out.

"Tommy," he said, loudly. "My name is Tommy."

"Do you have any guns on you Tommy?"

_If I surrender they might kill me, if I fight then they will. There's too many of them. Too many._

"I do."

"My name is Jarrod, Tommy. I'm an officer in this government."

"Do you run a quarantine zone?"

"We used to," he said. "The other quarantine zones are our brothers, I guess." His voice was southern too, much like Joel's own. "But we gave up on that a long time ago."

_If I resist they only need to throw one of those damn grenades and then shoot me apart when I run._

"Are you gonna come out, Tommy?"

"Are you goin' to shoot me?"

"If you make this hard, we will shoot you in the head. Are you alone?"

"Yes."

They were whispering, though Joel couldn't make out what they were saying, such was the point of whispering. Some words came to him, when he pushed his ear closer to the side of the can.

"… think … started the fire?"

"… if he did…  _she'll_  wanna see him…"

"… take him to her…"

Their whispers died and the man who had spoken before cleared his throat. "Tommy, we have the ability to protect you, but you have to come with us, and not fight us. That won't end well for you, and it won't end well for us."

"What do you want to protect me for?"

"Well, we don't, but we can't let you go, and we don't kill people without a reason. Will you come with us, or will this be difficult?"

The synchronised loading of six different rifles, maybe more, set Joel even more on edge. Most of all he was worried about Ellie.  _What will she do if they take me away?_ His hope was that she would wait here until he could get back to her – there was enough food in there for her to survive for a week, maybe more. More likely, she would follow him.

"I'll come."

"Good man. You understand that we need to take your weapons. Throw them over to us." There was some mutterings on their side. "A rifle, and the revolver too, as well as anything we didn't see."

Joel threw them over, each of them clattering against the ground. He took the ammo out of the revolver, sliding it into his trousers pockets. "That's it. Come on out now, easy does it." The broken shard of mirror he snapped off a section, pointed and straight and what could easily be a decent weapon, and slid it into the band of his trousers. The point cut into him at first, but when he stood the feeling disappeared completely.

"Well done, son. Come with us."

"Sir, shouldn't we wait for the other two?"

"Maybe. I don't wanna stay out here any longer than I have to. Steve, Stanley – will you two go check on those two idiots?"

"Aye," said one of them, and they moved off.

"Where are you taking me?" Joel asked.  _If I seem strong, they will know I am. They will see me as a threat, and they will kill me. But if I seem weak, maybe they'll kill me anyway._

"Surely you saw our base. The place with the lights."

"I saw it."

"Well that's where we're taking you."

"I'd much prefer to  **stay here** ," Joel said, raising his voice a little. "To  **wait here** 'till you pass."

"That isn't an option, Tommy. I'm sorry."

 _You sure as shit ain't sorry_ , was what he thought _._  "Yeah," was all he said.

The other men followed slightly behind and in front of Joel, their assault rifles all knowingly loaded, ready to shoot him in the back at the first sign. The look on their faces seemed to say that they wouldn't mind if it came to that either. This soldier of diplomacy and tact walking beside Joel seemed better, but no doubt it was all an act. Every seemingly good man played a part in the death. Usually, they didn't fire the guns. They just provided them; they gave the brutes the bullets.  _They told them who to shoot._ His mind fell to Sarah for just a moment.  _"Sir, there's a little girl. But – yes, sir."_

Slowly, he tried to move his head around to see Ellie; the tank slid away from in front of her cover, and he saw the two guards that this man sent in after the other guards mounting the bonnet they'd used as cover.  _Shit_ , he thought.  _Ellie._ He hoped she was hiding, and hiding well.

"Eyes front," said one of the guards, and Joel's head turned promptly.

Joel marched on, a prisoner in everything but name. The shard of mirror pressed against his skin, cold and sharp.


	15. Chapter 15

**Author's Note:** A long chapter by any standards. I don't really have much to say in the author's note, I'll let the chapter stand on its own this time, which is rare for me. It's big enough without my author's note clogging up the beginning of the page.

* * *

**JOEL**

* * *

The guards hold their positions around him at all times, never once parting.  _They're well-trained, I'll give them that._ The one Joel assumed was the leader of the group, the soldier who'd called himself Jarrod, walked on his left – but not too close. He was an old man, Joel reckoned around the same age as he was, maybe slightly younger. His stubble was black, greying in some places, same as his receding hairline. On his other side, however, there was no guard – only the tank.

He didn't recognise the design of the tank, and wondered how they managed to get a hold of one. They were rare these days, Joel had only come across a few, most of them fallen into disrepair and few people were able (or willing) to repair them. The tank was bulky and dark green, except for the insignia: an eagle with its legs spread far apart, clutching orange arrows in each of its talons.  _Looks American enough_ , he thought,  _but an eagle don't make it valid._

"… and you never know, for bringing her this fine specimen here she might reward us well," said one of the guards behind Joel. He didn't know which one, he wasn't willing to turn around again.  _Keep to myself and make this easier for all of us. I turn round, he gets nervous and waves his gun a little too much in my direction._

"A reward? No chance," said another. This one's voice was northern, there was no twang to his dialect. "You're living in a dream world. You just want between her legs."

"You kiddin' me, Ramsay? My dick would freeze off."

They all laughed, though there was a nervous quality to it that Joel did not miss. Jarrod said, "Don't let her hear you say that."

The guard behind him spoke again. "Hey, you never know how she'll react. Might be she'll be angry, might be she'll admire my bravery for sayin' so. She's got two faces for some of us."

"More like nine, I ain't never heard two people give the same damn account of her personality, if she even has one."

 _Who are they talking about? Some general, a leader?_ Joel waited until the soldiers were all talking among themselves, hoping the guard at his side was slightly more lax on treating him like a prisoner. The others enjoyed him being taunted and left in the dark. "This woman – who is she?"

"She's the one that organised this all. She's kept this place going."

"How many of you are there?"

"Hey, I can't be tellin' you things like that, you understand. There's enough of us to keep our part of the town safe."

"So I don't need to be kept safe from you?"

"That depends on how this plays out, doesn't it?" The leader gave Joel a look, this time there was no hearty humour contained in his eyes, though Joel didn't sense venom either. Only finality.  _This conversation is over_ , the look said.

For some time they continued on down a cleared road, past small areas of shops and apartments, places Joel had been in the past, but nowhere huge. The night everything changed he had come down this way with Sarah and Tommy.

"What the hell is that?"

When they came closer they realised it was a truck blocking their path; a big truck, nothing small, a dumpster truck. The tank came to a halt as did Joel's escort. A metal hatch swung open from the top of the tank and clanged hard and loud.

"No way was that an accident," said the guard who'd just emerged. He had short blonde hair, no more than thirty years old.

"Yes," the leader said, nodding. "Unfortunately it's sat there way too conveniently to be a mistake. What do you make of this, Tommy?"

Joel was confused.  _Why would they ask me?_ All of their eyes fell to him.  _He's testing me, he wonders if I'm a part of this. Be honest, Joel. Your life is in danger._  "Seems to me they're trying to flush you out, force you down one of the paths."

A guard tried to speak but Jarrod lifted a finger and he quickly fell silent. "So what do you suggest we do?"

"I don't know." He had to be careful; he didn't want them to know he knew the area. "Is there any particular way anyone would think you'd take? I take it that one of these ways," he pointed left and right, "is quicker than the other. Either they're waitin' for you in the short one, 'cause that's the one they think you'll take, or they figure you'll think of that, so they're waiting at the long one." He paused, but they didn't say anything. "Or there's someone with a radio both ways and we're all fucked no matter which way you pick."

"Well said," the leader said, and then the others began to speak among themselves. They all spoke so quickly and all at once, listening to each other and talking, discussing strategies and movements. He only caught little parts of their words, and at the last minute, when he released to listen only to one of their conversations, they stopped.

"… if it is civilians then we have to assume they've blocked the short road, and we'll take the long one. We got the tank if we need it, let's just hope it's not too close or we all better get into cover. Make sure your guns are loaded, boys. Let's not make that mistake again."

They all nodded and the tank's driver ducked back into the tank. There was a few seconds of silence, followed by the mechanically twisting sound of the tank's tracks moving in reverse, taking it back. For some reason, Joel half-expected the sound of a loaded van to signal. He almost smiled at the thought. The men follow the tank around, taking the left route. Truthfully, Joel only saw the spotlights in the distance; he couldn't tell where they were coming from. Sure, it wouldn't be difficult to find them, but it meant at that moment he truly could not tell which was the quick route, and which was the long and winding route.

The 'long route' takes them through the central area of town – a section he remembers from the night, all too well. A long road stretches up ahead, but Joel can't help but feel his bones go cold when he remembers the terror of the car slamming into the side of his own, knocking it over, breaking Sarah's leg.  _I carried her from here_ , he thought when he reached the part of pavement he thought was right. He wanted to stop and look at the ground, but he couldn't. He had to keep going.  _I carried her and I didn't let her go until, until –_

"Why aren't there any cars?" he asks. The men are quiet, and he knows at once he interrupted the quiet, to their chagrin.

"They was all cleared a while back, for the quarantine zone. You need clear streets."  _Boston didn't seem to think so._

"This is a quarantine zone?"

"Once upon a time. Keep your voice down, there might be people listening. As if the tank weren't bad enough without our chatter adding to the rumble."

He was right, of course. If there were some of them around to attack, voices would be what they'd latch onto, and what they'd fire at. The thought made him uneasy.  _If they attack, maybe I could get away in the chaos – get back to Ellie._ His mind turned to her again then.  _I hope she's okay. If they hurt her I swear to god…_ He tries to push the thought from his mind. Surely, if they did find Ellie, all they'd do is bring her to wherever the hell they're taking Joel.

The thought summoned itself up, an invader,  _Unless they find the bodies first._

 _Two of 'em. So she could have hid behind the counter. No, wait, how did she get in? There were barrels._ He started to panic.  _Wait, there was a dumpster, wasn't there? Yeah, there was. She hid behind it and waited until they went inside, then ran. Maybe she's following us now. But if they find the bodies, they'll come back to me, and they'll get me for shooting their men._ He shook his head slightly, as if he had cramp. He lifted his hand to his neck and felt one of their rifles against the small of his back. Slowly, his hands moved down again, and the rifle moved away.

_Don't worry about Ellie, Joel. Ellie is strong. Worry about gettin' back to her._

They past the old ruined gas station Joel saw explode that night too, but his eyes had business elsewhere – he was looking at the cinema down the road, to the right, where he'd taken Sarah and Tommy down an alley. The cinema looked so dull – the letters were gone and large patches seemed to have bubbled. Even from the distance he could make out the blackness from where it had burned.  _Did the entire town burn that night?_ He didn't know – he hadn't gone back.

One street gave onto another, and another. Most things looked the same. Some of them he didn't even remember, and once he thought they had gone down the same street twice. They hadn't though, he realised soon, not when he saw the waste ground. The skeletons of old cars mounted on each other, piles of them, huge; rubber gone, only the immoveable metal discs underneath remained. When he was a kid, Joel had spent a long time around cars with his old man. Taking them apart, fixing them up. If not for that, he wouldn't have recognised them.  _Were these the cars of someone I knew, my neighbours, people I'd say hi to in the street?_ He pushed that from his mind too. His neighbours were as dead as the streets he was walking on.

It wasn't long until he found out where the metal had gone. On turning the corner he saw the wall up close for the first time; high and patched, welded together and mounted. Behind it there must have been something to hold it up, it was so high. High enough to not require barbed wires.

"Home stretch boys," said the guard behind Joel, the one he figured had stuck his rifle so kindly at Joel's back. The guards laughed – again, nervously. They were all very good at laughing nervously.

There were doors built into the wall; wooden with metal shielding of sections. It seemed to Joel that the doors were the weakest parts of the structure.  _Why would you make a door of wood?_ Panels that could swing open and let people out instead of fully opening the doors. He understood the idea, but  _wood?_

"What do you want from me?" Joel asked.  _This might be my last chance to get away from here, or to find out what I can say to let them let me out._

"Information, maybe. I don't know, Tommy. Everyone has a skill. Surely, being with us is better than being out here –  _all alone_." The look and the way he said those last two words concerned Joel.  _He knows I was with someone. Does he know about Ellie?_ Joel didn't reply, thoughts roaring through his head like leaves in an autumn storm.  _Does he think I'm someone I'm not?_

Promptly, the door holes opened and another group, all fully armed with rifles and side-arms in holsters on their belts, spilled out, searching the area. Attached to the tops of their rifles were torches that cast light around the place. They looked over the windowless buildings around them, casting changing shadows around the place. They ran their torchlight across the ledge Joel stood near too, and found nothing but shrubbery.

"Who is your captive, Jarrod?" A guard approached them, wandering out from the door. His face was obscured, he was wearing a gas mask. Joel doubted it was for safety – he knew protocol when he saw it. This man wasn't concerned, it was just a formality. His casual swagger said that.

"I'm not sure."

"A civilian?"

Jarrod's eyes flickered to Joel and stayed there whilst he replied. "He could be. Not for us to decide now, is it?" His eyes moved back to the other man. After a moment of pause, he nodded. The others almost made to move, when he gave an additional command. "Search him first. We don't want any surprises."

An officer made to search Joel when Jarrod halted him, and started it himself. He started at Joel's shoulders and worked his way down, patting all around. It wasn't until the soldier reached his waist that he remembered the mirror shard he'd stuck between in the waistband of his trousers; and all too late he was acutely aware of it, pressing against him, still cold to the touch of his bare skin. Jarrod seemed to hesitate around the area where it was, patting twice as hard and twice as much around the waist area, but then he beat on, searching his legs. Joel wanted to breath with relief but he couldn't, no more than he could show he'd been hurt when the shard cut him.

"All clear."

"Alright," said the one with the mask. He swung his arm around in the area as he shouted. "Open 'em up!"

The doors parted at once, creaking as they did, and suddenly Joel realised why there was no need for better doors. Only the bottom half gave way, the other seemed to just be a ruse for some reason. In a stroke Joel realised the doors were the most secure part of the structure – not so much a door as an entrance to a deep tunnel. It didn't go underground, but it functioned as a path to the other side of the wall, and went on for at least the length of the tank four times over. Joel looked up and around as he was going; gravel, small stones, thousands and thousands of them, held in place by some cement, bags, and under it all, nearest to Joel, a metal grate holding it all together. If this wall fell, anyone under it would be crushed, and no closer to getting over either. It was a fortress.  _Who in hell designs this sort of thing?_

The squad began to make their way through the tunnel.

"Makes you feel funny, doesn't it?" said a guard, one with the heavy southern voice. Ahead of Joel walked Jarrod, who glanced back for a second, likely to see if he was being addressed, and then around again.

Joel looked to the man beside him, who was staring right at him and nodded. "Yeah."

"The chief had this place designed. Hell knows who by, but it's meant to fuck with you. Make you feel small. Hell, we can't get the tank through it and you'd think we'd want to keep that by our side, so all it does is patrol around the perimeter and if we go out scouting. God only knows why she didn't want the tank inside the wall. It sure as hell would let me sleep safer."

"Safer from what?" Joel couldn't help but ask. "I didn't see any infected."

The guard opened his mouth to speak, his face twisted into a confused grin, when Jarrod cut him off. " – That's enough, Ripley."

Nothing else was said until they emerged on the other side.

Joel was disappointed when he reached the other side. It was just like the outside of the wall, except they had a generator going for electricity. There was an old power plant over the hill from here, not far from Joel's house.  _Maybe they got that running, like Tommy did. Hooked this part of the town up to the grid._ He knew best not to ask. People, every one of them in military uniform, were active. Slightly less carried their rifles, but they all at least had a side-arm in a holster, and Joel didn't doubt that they knew how to use them. It was the way they walked; backs straight enough to be backwards. Joel knew an army men when he saw one. They used to come back to Texas all the time. This time twenty years ago there was a war going on, the United States and the war on terror. He wondered what happened to the soldiers in the Middle East briefly.

"Jarrod," said a man approaching them. He didn't wear a gas mask like the others did – no one was wearing one – but on his top was a hat, the type a US ranger might wear. Joel couldn't be sure, but he was fairly certain his hair was all but gone. The old man was older than Joel was by at least ten years. His forehead was creased into folds. "Who's your friend here?"

"I don't know about friend yet, captain," he said, laughing a little. "But I'm sure we'll get to the bottom of that. Soon."

The captain smiled a little, his green eyes watching Joel. "What's your name, son?"

"His name's Tommy," Jarrod said, interrupting.

"He a mute, Jarrod?"

Jarrod was confused. "Well… no, captain."

"Then I think he can speak for himself. What's your name?"

"Tommy."

The old captain laughed. "I don't know what I expected. Come with me, Tommy."

" – No!" Jarrod cut in, and Joel could see the regret appear in his face the moment he said it. " _With respect_ , captain. I'd like to take him myself. See, we found him out there, and I want to explain what went down."

"Why is it," the captain began, "that every time someone says  _with respect_ , what they really mean is  _eat shit_?"

"Captain, I –"

"I, I, I," he mocked, "I don't give a shit. I could report you for what you just did, and you know  _she_  does not like it when superior orders are disobeyed." Jarrod said nothing.  _He's learned that lesson._ "Take your damn prisoner," the captain muttered and left them. Joel didn't have anything to add, but he saw Jarrod deflate several inches, relieved. Beside Joel, some of the other men's mouths were open in shock.

"Get out of here, you're dismissed," Jarrod said. For a moment, Joel thought they weren't going to but, slowly, they did, muttering. Jarrod sighed deeply. "Jackasses. This way." He pointed by jabbing his elbow straight down the street.

Joel started walking. Some eyes lingered too long on him, he could see the distrust and the suspicion. In his casual clothes he stuck out, surrounded by military suits. He wondered what they'd done with his guns, his backpack. No doubt they'd search through it, scavenge it for supplies…  _Do I have anything incriminating in there?_

"… who is that, with Jarrod?"

The whispers followed him all the way down the street; past a bar that Joel doubted sold alcohol, a medical centre. These were buildings Joel recognised, but the signs were all new and makeshift. Of all of them, only the medical clinic looked professional. He wondered if they had real doctors. Doctors that healed, not doctors that tried to take lives. One some walls posters hung, colourful – red, white and blue. Star-spangled eagles and the outline of Uncle Sam. Propaganda. Even with the dim lighting he couldn't see what they said, only the shapes.

"Stop here," Jarrod said from behind. Joel turned around to see what he was looking at: a church with a single spire, a clock tower and bell at the top.  _Sarah was christened here_ , he knew immediately. He remembered the day well. It had only been at his mother's insistence. And not long later, before her time, she'd died. Joel, in some ways, was glad neither of his parents had to face the ruined world they lived in now. "This is us."

"Where are we?"

"Her base of operations. Right in the middle of the zone."

"A church?"

"Don't worry, the irony is not lost on me." Jarrod led him up the main set of stairs and then, about to enter, he paused. On his belt he undid a pair of handcuffs. "Put these on," he said. "Please, don't argue. If she finds out we brought you in without them she'll hang us from the clock tower. Not literally."

Joel put the handcuffs on, though he kept his hands to the front; he could defend himself against an unarmed man that way. If they had a gun, though…

Jarrod pushed open the great arched doors to the church. The chamber spread out in front of them; Joel expected the pews he'd seen before, at the far side of the room the altar and the small bath for holy water. Today was the day Joel was learning to stop expecting things. The altar was gone, and so were the pews, likely mashed up as part of the wall's defences outside. The room had once been aglow with a godliness, an echo for choirs to fill with their voices. Now only the quiet murmur of death in the room echoed. Joel walked, slightly ahead of Jarrod this time, up what had once been an aisle.

In the centre of the room sat a great table, and on it a map. A map of the town. Rolled up maps were below the table, on the floor. Three in total.  _One for the town, one for the state, one for the country?_ Around the map were soldiers, all men. Their eyes did not lift from it, not even to glance in his direction. It was a strange relief for Joel, having experienced all the other eyes on the way to this god forsaken place.

"Wait here," Jarrod said. "Do not move." He seemed nervous, and walked off to the table.

 _If this is all that's left of the United States government like they say, why the hell is there less security here than at a nightclub?_  He looked around; where Joel remembered there was once a statue of Christ now a weapons cache was in its place. The stained glass windows, no doubt a structural weakness, were all boarded up. Above, light was coming in from the stain glass ceiling – a great dome. When he looked up to see it, suddenly he knew why security was so lax.

All around the upper balconies of the church were snipers, every last one trained on Joel. There were eight than Joel could see, but no doubt he was stood below a few that he couldn't see. The balcony spanned the entire room, though it hadn't before – Joel could see where they'd added makeshift planks to make it so. Movement caught his eye and he looked down; some men around the map were looking at Jarrod, others simply gave Joel the same cold eye he'd grown accustomed to in the past ten minutes.

Some hushed discussion from the table ahead, the guards glancing back every now again from Jarrod. Some nodded, others looked to fit to burst into rage. Joel didn't know what to make of the place.  _A church? Really? Snipers; propaganda. Whoever's in charge, they sure get off on controlling this place._ Jarrod came back to him with an older man, Joel guessed around the same age as the ranger. He wore no hat, however; and his hair was completely gone. His uniform was sharp and crisp; even his boots were a polished black.  _And here I thought the days of cleaning your shoes were a thing of the past._

"Prisoner," Jarrod said, his voice stronger, firmer.  _Putting on a show, are we?_ "Come here."

Joel did as he was told. He didn't have much of a choice.

"This is the general. He is going to be your escort, as I do not have clearance to go through this building."

"Don't explain yourself to him," the general spat. There were no stars nor rank badges on his jacket. Joel hadn't seen any. "He's a prisoner. Come with me."

Jarrod's expression was forlorn, but that was the last Joel saw of him. Compared to the others, he was a breath of fresh mountain air. This general was the brutish sort, no doubt. It was surprising to see a bold old man – in this world there were bold men, and there were old men, but Joel had never come across a bold, old man before.  _Ish was bold, and he certainly wasn't young._

_And he's dead, Joel._

He thought of Ellie as the general made him walk along the corridors, always ahead of him. The handcuffs were not tight, but his wrists were beginning to ache. He examined them as he walked, not allowing his head to be dipped too far down lest he be searched again. There was no doubt that this man would order a more thorough search; and Joel did not like the sound of that at all. Orange rust snaked up the chains of the handcuffs. If Joel tried hard enough, he might be able to burst through. No doubt the well-polished general had a gun on him this very moment. That spoke of much.  _He doesn't need to threaten me by pushing it against my back, he only needs the gun out so he can shoot me in the back._ Besides, pushing your gun into someone's back was a terrible idea anyway. Maybe the polished general knew that.

Joel couldn't even see the outline where the religious pictures had once hung. Lights had been on these walls too, but they'd been replaced; large baskets hanging above them carrying coal and some kind of oil provided light in the form of flame; it filled the basket to the brim and cast light over them. There were many of them as they walked, and they gave Joel a bad feeling almost as much as the wall did.

Up a flight of stairs and along a corridor. More stairs. It seemed this woman had put herself in the office of the minister, the largest and highest room. He remembered the room, but only just – the entire outer section of the wall formed a great window out, looking over the town. Joel wondered what broken ruin he'd see when he looked out.  _If I can see my old house I won't look._

He was right. The general made him wait. He opened the door and a high shout came out; a woman, her voice was angry and contorted. She was from the north too, he thought.  _I wonder if she's a bureaucrat, come to restore the world._ The way Jarrod had spoken seemed to imply she'd been here for a long time, however.

The general disappeared inside the door, the shouting blocked out as it closed. Or it stopped. Joel couldn't tell. It was a few moments later when the general exited the room, holding it open. A few men, looking guilty and upset, slipped out of the room and slunk back down the steps from where Joel had come.

"Here," the general said. Joel came closer to the door. "You have the honor of addressing the President of FEDRA, the remnants of the United States government."

Joel entered the room and, with a salute, the general left.

 _Looking out the window isn't an option._ She'd had them boarded up; no more did it outlook the town or let in light. The room was light, however; electric lamps around the room and the ceiling. At her desk were maps, pieces of paper with pen all over them, writings, reports likely.

"What's – what's your name?"

The woman had red hair – not ginger, true red – that was pulled back into a very tight bun, her skin milky white, fully clear. Not a blemish. Her eyebrows were higher, into her forehead, open in a gaze of bewildered shock. The woman seemed terrified.  _I ain't really that terrifyin', am I?_

"Tommy," Joel said.

"Hello Tommy. I'd invite you to – to sit, but I don't have any other chairs. My name is Lydia." Her lips were pursed together in a smile that twitched. By all accords, this woman was attractive. Attractive and frightened. _Why would these soldiers follow her? Chain of command, out of some misplaced sense of duty?_

"That's alright."

"Could you explain why you were found in the town? What were you doing here? Can you tell me? Please?"

"I was looking for food," he said at once. He'd prepared this reply. "I came south to escape the winter and only just got here."

She nodded quickly a few times. "Ah. I understand. Where were you?"

"Wyoming."

"Oh. How is it there?"

"It's cold."

"I can imagine, yes." She laughed nervously.  _Very nervously._ Maybe she taught the other guards how to do so, she did it  _so well…_  "It seems there was some nasty business just outside the city borders. A fire. It killed three of my men."

"Hey now, I don't know anything about no fire."

"I'm not accusing you, Tommy. Don't worry." She smiled. "You might be looking at the last place on earth where there is a judge and jury."

_And executioner?_

"Why is the military in this town?"

She narrowed her eyes a little, thinking, before she replied. "You aren't – hmm –  _familiar_ with the town's history?" He shook his head. He flexed his arms a little, his wrists stiff and sore, and she snapped – her desk drawer flew open and she had a gun in her hand. Joel backed off a few steps.

"It's – it's my hands. The handcuffs, they hurt."

The gun shook in her hand, shook like mad, a woman who'd never fired a gun before… and then she began to laugh. "Oh, I'm so sorry." She placed the gun back in the drawer, and closed it too.  _If you're so tense, why would you close the drawer? Shouldn't it be ready at all times? Why would you let guards leave the room?_ "I just – little movements. You know what this world is like. Crazy!"

Joel nodded a few times.

"The history of the town," she said, clasping her hands together. "Well… well, well. It was one of the first to get hit bad, and the military rolled in during the initial crisis. The very night. This was a long time ago. I wasn't president, no I never dreamed of it! I just gave the orders. I've never even  _fired_  a gun before! I might be the last person in this country to have never fired a gun at a human being. Isn't that something?" She smiled.

"Yeah."

"Time went by and things changed. We had a fort set up. The entire town fell within our reach. It became a quarantine zone, but we didn't have the supplies. We just didn't. I tried so hard. We cleared the streets, but infected kept getting in. The guard towers weren't enough, neither were the fences." She had spoken so fast before, but now she slowed. "There were so many people that needed help. The civilians. Do you know of them?"

Joel shook his head. She continued on: "We began to set up this fort here, with the wall. Melted down everything we could have. This was maybe, five or six years after everything changed. We set up the wall but the civilians… those who weren't part of the forces, they didn't like it. They asked to leave. We let them, of course." She shook her head, eyes watching him all the while. Her hands were fiddling with each another.

"I want to leave this place."

"You see, I can't allow that. I wish I could, but protocol and things. See, here's the thing,  _Tommy._ I think there's something you are keeping from me. I can see it in your eyes. You know this town. Are you one of them?"

"One of who?"

"You play a  _good_ game." The nervousness and tension was gone. "General," she shouted. At once, the general and two other guards with rifles came into the room, pointed at Joel. He lifted his hands up in the air, though there wasn't much point with the handcuffs. "Take him to the church basement, and send for Patrick. Some time with him might get Tommy to loosen his lips a little."

"I don't know what you want from me! I'm not who you think I am!"

"You're one of them, Tommy. I know you are. I doubt that's even your real name. When asked, the little girl you were with gave us a different name." She was smiling now, but the awkwardness was gone, the fright was gone. This was a woman who inspired fear, not cowered at the sight of an unarmed prisoner. "Take his fingers first. We don't want him taking up arms against us, do we?"

"What the hell did you do to her? You said this was fuckin' civilised, you said there was a judge and a jury!"

"There  _is._ It just so happens that I often play the role of both. In war time… well, extreme measures must be taken. I am sorry for your loss."

She went back to reading.

Joel screamed at Lydia, but she had given up listening.

 _She's dead and I'm dead. I'm going to die here._ "FUCKIN' LET ME GO!"

He screamed and screamed at her as they trailed him from the room and then, fed up with his shouts, they slammed the foot of a rifle hard into his face, and knocked him out cold.


	16. Chapter 16

**Author's Note:** Here we go again. This is a pretty significant chapter in a few ways. It provides some really important backstory for the new players that've been added to the game and hints at the things to come. It's not the cheeriest of chapters, but I tried to not let it become completely hopeless (trust me: Joel's next chapter will probably be the defining criteria for the upcoming clinical diagnosis of  _completely hopeless_ ). Now, there is, however, some dark stuff in the chapter. Nothing at all that gruesome and described, but some things that you might find very difficult to empathise with. I will, however, ask that you do try. Imagine yourself in the place of these characters. So, please,  **read and review, follow and favourite!** I received a lot of positive reviews for the last chapter, something I'm really happy about. I'll be glad to see what you think of this chapter, which is very similar to the other in some ways, and very different in others. They're meant to be comparable, and they can be. The settings, the characters. You'll see.

 **(continued author's note - you don't actually need to read this, I'm just verbalising some thoughts I have on the chapters upcoming, no spoilers):** What else? Ah, yes. The next chapter will indeed be a Joel chapter, which wasn't my intention. What I had hoped to do was weave them together a little differently. For the first time in my story, the characters are truly separated. The last time, they had a vague plan. This time, there's no such plan. This time Joel has been told Ellie is dead, and Ellie doesn't know anything about what they're doing - or going to do - to Joel. It's very frightening for both of them, and it's interesting, when writing, to try and see how each character is dealing with those situations. Now that they're so close and bonded, what happens when that physical closeness is severed and they're forced apart? Ellie needs a father right now, but he can't be there for her. Joel needs Ellie because he is losing his grasp on reality, and the town is not making it better, and the people aren't making it better. It's all very interesting. Enjoy the chapter, folks. I really enjoyed writing it. **  
**

* * *

**ELLIE**

* * *

They were coming towards her quickly, but maybe enough time for her to escape. They had in their hand, attached by a binding to their shoulders.  _I won't be able to get one of them away from them_ , she thought. The tank and Joel were moving away down the road, soon she wouldn't be able to see them.

Ellie scurried back on her knees, keeping low. The alley was darker than the rest of the street, and her clothes, she knew, would make her difficult to see. She sped up a little as she came closer to the door, realising it was blocked by the garbage cans.  _Shit._ Frantically she looked around; she could hear their footsteps coming closer, their voices rising…

She rolled in behind a dumpster she hadn't seen before, hurting her back. Loose glass on the ground cut into the small of her back as she rolled, though not enough to make her cry out. Not with the guards so close…

"… if he's one of them, she'll find out soon enough."

"I don't know, he seemed like a tight-ass."

"That'll change when she sets loose Patrick on him."

The other man sounded disgusted. "Patrick's a rabid dog. Someone should put him down."

"Lydia won't – a rabid dog on a leash is better than no dog at all."

"I dunno man, if I had to choose between a rabid dog like Patrick or a pup like Jarrod to watch my bag, I know who I'd feel safer with. That way I don't need to worry that Patrick would stab me in the goddamn back whilst we were dealing with infected."

His partner laughed gruffly. Their drawls were deep, southern, thicker than Joel's own. She didn't like their tones – not their voices, but the way they  _said_  the words. Full of mean intentions, cruelty. Ellie knew they were bastards just from their voices.

"What do we have here?" said one of them. They'd come to a stop, she figured, as no longer could she hear their footsteps. Slowly, cautiously, she peeked her head around the dumpster. She could see their outlines in the darkness.

_When they go inside I can get away from here, it's my chance to run, and they'd never know._

The rattling clang of metal clashing together as they lifted them roughly, sitting them against the wall behind them. It took them a minute or so to remove all three of them, Ellie watching all the time. Sometimes they seemed to look her way and she drew back in quickly, frightened, but they never came for her, they didn't even react.

When they opened the door, it creaked just like it had with Joel and Ellie before.  _Just go inside, just go inside._ The pointed their rifles inside the building, torches slid into place where the iron sights should have been. It was then that Ellie realised she couldn't leave.  _If they see the bodies, they'll think Joel killed both of them, all they have to do is radio in and they'll beat him or worse._ These men were loose ends that she had to tie up. As they cast the light around the inside of the room, she drew her switchblade out and crept towards them.

They were both inside the room now, and she was so close. One of them turned their scopes on the door. Separately they shouted for their friends, the ones that Joel and Ellie had killed and now lay in a heap at the bottom of the stairs.  _Brown Shoes and Black Shoes, that was what we called them, I can't let them see them. If they signal..._

The crunch of broken glass beneath her sounded loud and clear in the air, and the lights were on her, blinding her. Slowly she lifted her hand to shield her from the lights.  _If I run they will shoot me._

"What do we have here, Stanley? Looks like a little girl got lost."

"Get in here, you little bitch. And drop that knife right where you are."

Ellie opened the fingers of her outstretched hand and the switchblade fell to the ground, clanging. The men looked on, they backed off slowly as she entered the dark room.

"What's your name?"

She hesitated for a moment. "Tess."

"And you were with that man? What was his name?"  _What was the name he used when we were found in the dam? What was it?_ "What FUCKING NAME DID HE USE?" one of them screamed, firing rifle shots into the air. Her body quaked and shivered a little, fear running through her. She wouldn't show them it, though.

"Trey, his name was Trey!"

"That the name you heard, Steve?"

"I don't think saw. I thought he said Tommy," the other one said – Steve. He seemed to be the less vicious of the two, but his stare still frightened Ellie. Stanley was the true bastard of the couple – she could see that. His leer was venomous, the dick.  _If I play this wrong they'll kill me._

 _Damn it, Ellie._ "No, his name is Trey. You might've heard him wrong."

"Or maybe he lied, because he's  _one of 'em._ I told you that Steve, I told you he was one of 'em. Fucking civilians."

 _Why would they hate civilians, they should be protecting them._ That wasn't true with the quarantine zone, though; she knew that people were more complex than that. The government might have been set up with the intent to save people once, a long time ago, but that was long before Ellie was born. Now people were out for themselves.

"I'll radio it in," Steve said, taking the radio from his belt. "This is Remnant Squad One to Church, do you copy?" Ellie had no clue what they meant; this base they codenamed Church must be inside that giant wall fortress. "Yeah, we got a suspected civilian here. She was with the man they've taken in. Young teens, requestin' advice, over." The man took his finger of the button and spoke to Stanley, whose eyes were watching Ellie almost as closely as the barrel of the gun he held. "They're putting Lydia on."

Stanley seemed disturbed by that; Ellie saw his fingers tense, open and close and open and close on the rifle, as if it suddenly seemed uncomfortable in his hands.

"Yes, ma'am, it's Stephen." Though it was an earpiece, Ellie could tell there was certainly a woman on the other end of the line, talking to them. "She seems to have come with the suspected civilian we contacted you about less than five minutes ago … I'm not sure. Fourteen, maybe fifteen. She's got blood on her. What? No, she's only a child, she's no danger. What?... Yes, ma'am." The man raised his gun.

 _No no, no, no._ Ellie turned and tried to run, tried to sprint towards the door but she couldn't see it – black walls on all sides, or something blocking the door – the door was gone. Gunshots rang out heavy and the light the gun cast up illuminated the room.  _I'm dead. They've killed me and I'm dead._

She was coiled up on the ground and she didn't know how she got there. Hands over her ears, rocking back and forth.  _Joel come back, please come back._ Arms on her shoulders.

"What's your name? It's going to be okay. Come on."

Ellie slapped at the voice, the long hair. Slapped hard. "LET ME GO!"

But the arms kept her where she was, and she couldn't run. Other hands held her too. They held her down until she stopped struggling, tears running down her face. She just wanted to be with Joel again, but he was gone.

"Come on, let's get you somewhere safe," the woman said.

Through blurry eyes she saw a man standing over the bodies of the slain soldiers, of the men who had tried to kill her. He was reaching down for something, pulling it free. "Civilian neutralised. Returning to the convoy."

* * *

They'd backed Ellie up into the wall of the alley, trapped in the corner.

"Who the fuck are you?"

"We're not the bad guys here," said the woman as the man left the building. He tried to close the door and realised that it didn't, just as Joel and she had what seemed like hours ago. Realistically it couldn't have been more than half an hour. "We're a resistance group."

"What?" Fireflies came to her mind. Marlene.

"Come with us and we'll explain. It isn't safe out here. Patrols, sometimes infected –"

"You can explain to me here or not at fucking all," Ellie said. She was holding her switchblade out, though it wouldn't really do much good. The man had just killed two armed soldiers with a pistol; her eyes checked uneasily for its location. It was in its holster.

"Ben," the woman said, looking at the man. She had blonde hair that tumbled around her shoulders; her nose was straight and long, her skin an olive hue that hinted she had come from foreign descent. Her voice, however, was all American – but more like her own than Joel's. "Talk to her."

"We just saved your life, girl," he said, sounding tired. "Give us a damn break. Lower the knife. If we wanted you to die we would have waited until you were shot."

Ellie was worried, she couldn't trust them. For a while she'd trusted David, hadn't she? That hadn't worked out, not well at all… but there was something different about these two. They weren't just survivors. They were tired survivors; the woman was young but surviving had taken a toll on her. On her throat was a scar, white as Ellie's own skin.  _Why else would they have helped me?_

"This is Ben, and I'm April. We're formerly of this town. What's your name?"

"Tess."

"Tess," the man repeated. "What's your real name, Tess?"

Ellie bit her bottom lip, and then slowly she let her switchblade drop to her side. "Ellie."

"That sounds more like a little girl's name."

"I'm  _fifteen._ "

"And I'm  _fifty_ ," the man said, "and I don't deny I'm old as shit." At his side, the woman laughed.

The man had a gait that reminded her of Joel, but he was strokes different from him – his hair was white and receding, the central part of his head was bald. He was a fit man, a square jaw and blue eyes, set firmly in place. He was the same size as Joel, where the woman was a little smaller.

"Why are you and your friend in town, Ellie? He's in a lot of trouble. Those men he went off with may seem a merry bunch… and maybe they are. But the people on high… they're bastards, the lot of 'em. Not to be trusted."

Ellie's eyes narrowed. "And I can trust you?"

"You know, Ellie, I think you can." It was the woman who stepped forward this time. Ellie's first instinct was to raise her blade, but she didn't. The woman didn't come much closer either, just a step. "We have our own reasons for wanting you, but they're nobler than the reasons of the government. Hear us out."

For a few seconds Ellie considered running, following the convoy, surrendering herself. She'd be with Joel, yes, but for how long? If these people were as dangerous as it seemed – and they seemed pretty bad – then maybe siding with these people wasn't such a bad idea. They would use her, of that she had no doubt, but maybe – just maybe – she could use them too.

"I'm listening," she said.

* * *

They were in another alley, one that seemed to go on forever. Dumpster and dumpster stretching into infinite… Some time ago, Ellie had spied the tank, though she couldn't see the people on the other side. It had past the street they were going on, forcing them to stay low for a moment. The man – Ben – had been cautious, so they remained there for a few minutes after the tank had passed. "We have to be sure," he said, "or we lead them straight into our home turn, and so far the fact they don't know where we're based is one of our only advantages."

Sometimes she caught a glimpse of the outside through the gaps between buildings – she saw derelict and broken shops with no windows, an old gas station, an alleyway with a gate that led into a restaurant of some sort – the door broken away from the hinges. They went behind a giant complex until they came to a dumpster, as typical looking as the rest, and Ben opened it.

"After you," Ben said to Ellie, holding open the dumpster.

"You want me to climb in there?"

"Go fuck yourself."

April and Ben laughed.

"I see your problem," April said, still coming down from the laugh. "Just watch. Ben?"

Ben lowered his hands and boosted April up into the dumpster, like Joel had done with Ellie a thousand times over. April fell into the dumpster, landing on her feet. Ellie drew a little closer to see what was happening.  _A secret entrance?_ Inside, she ran her fingers along the left corner closest to the brick wall of the building. After a few moments, there was a pop and the panel slid away, giving way to the wall.

 _Cool_ , Ellie thought, but she wouldn't show it. She looked around the side of the dumpster, noticing it was flat against the wall. It was clear there was a part of the wall missing, and the wheels of the dumpster had been removed. "Okay," Ellie said and moved up to Ben. He offered his hands out and she placed her right foot on it, and in he went. April had already disappeared when Ellie jumped in. She peered into the darkness of the hole in the wall. The floor was mostly clean, though there were some scraps. It was instinct that made her bring out her switchblade, swiftly and without drawing attention to it.

"You okay, Ellie?" Ben asked.

"Yeah."

"I'm right here." April's voice was close; so close Ellie could practically feel April's breath on her face. That thought made her shiver a little. Cautiously and slowly, Ellie crawled into the gap and found there was a surface that kept going. One knee at a time. Without any warning, she slid down a chute, tumbling all the way.

Ellie landed on a safe surface and got to her feet as quickly as she could. Her switchblade was in the palm of her hand, pressed against the waist of her jeans, concealing it. In the darkness she could see the outline of a person. The fingers of her other hand slid up and pushed on the button of her torch, flashing across the room. April was standing, hand on her hips, and Ben tumbled down the chute, landing at Ellie's feet. Behind April were circles, discs of something, black slides glinted in the torchlight.

"What are those?"

"What?" Ben asked, standing, readjusting his shirt.

"The discs, with the black tape," she said, pointing behind April.

April glanced behind her. "Oh, they're movie discs from old theatres."

Ben nodded and walked off, indicating for Ellie to follow. April walked past Ellie first, and soon she fell in line. When they left the room she found the rest of the building suitably lighted, though the front rooms were all blocked off. There were more people around than she expected there to be – they side-stepped her in the corridor, tried to avoid eye contact. April and Ben were greeted by others in the corridor, and they returned the greetings.  _Everyone looks so normal_ , she thought.

"Can you explain to me what the hell is going on now?"

"Not long now."

"Elevators are out of order so we've got to take the stairs," April laughed.

Up they went; so many stairs. There were more stairs in this building than there were in the hotel they'd visited, or there had been in the university, or the school. They'd been a lot of places, and never had they faced stairs like these. Every inch of wall was full to burst with posters, advertisements of all sorts. This was a place where the old world still ruled, though Ellie knew nothing of that. What Ellie saw was a place where remnants of a world she'd never known existed; a time she understood little and envied much.  _I've never seen a film before._ She didn't know how long they lasted, nor who were the stars of the time. People's names were littered across the posters, none she recognised.

They reached the top floor of the cinema and entered a room. There was a window inside the room that looked out into a much larger room. There were sparse chairs and gaps where it seems other chairs had been, plucked at their mechanical roots. Some people were in the room, and weapons spread across the bottom area of the room, nearest the largest black wall.

Ben closed the door after Ellie entered and took a seat. April took another.

"You can sit down, if you like," Ben said.

"I'll stand."

"Suit yourself."

"What the fuck is going on? Who took him?"

"They were telling the truth. They really are what's left of the US government," Ben explained, nodding. "But that's about the extent of the truth we tell. We have sources inside and for the most part they're liars. Sometimes the town receives outsiders and they bring them in and load them up with lies."

"Cut the shit. What will they do to him?"

Ben sighed, and April took up the slack. "They will think he's one of us."

"And who are you then?" Ellie was still standing, though she rested against some form of machine in the corner of the room.

"We're a resistance group. There's a lot of us – more than there is of the army. It started a long time ago, Ellie. I don't want a bore you with the details… I mean it, they're very dull. It didn't happen instantly; nothing ever happens instantly." April dazed off a little, distracted by something. Ben placed his hand around her wrist and squeezed; Ellie didn't miss it. She smiled at him. "There were so many arguments. They tried to pretend like things were done in an orderly fashion – but they weren't."

Ben nodded in agreement. "Behind closed doors the president was plotting to throw out anyone who wasn't enlisted. Most of us weren't – the president didn't like people with families to enlist, you see. Her argument was fairly simple and most people bought it. Well, they bought it because they didn't want to look any deeper. She said… she said that she didn't want people with families to be lost. The president didn't want families suffering, not when the world's a mess. This was maybe four, five years after the infection hit. Then they began to enforce no pregnancy rules. They have a medical clinic and I'm saying straight-up that keeping people alive isn't their highest priority."

April slapped his wrist. "Ben, she's fifteen."

"I know, April, but she may as well know what that bitch does. Her name is Lydia, Ellie. Remember that name."

"Why? Who is she?"

"We don't know much, but we've been able to piece together her later life. When the infection hit she was in control of the national guard for this sector, mostly because she lost contact with her superiors. Soon, she was the superior. She sent out the orders on the night that everything went to hell."

_That means that… no. Sarah._

April nodded. "I'm not saying it wasn't needed. Maybe if she hadn't been there, things would have been a lot worse, but she needed to be depowered, but the army kept her on top. They moved out of town after the infection, to the next city and found it dead. Then, a year later, they came back. We'd set up some a perimeter around the town by then and they broke it down. There was some fighting but… nothing remarkable. Nobody died that I remember, a few injuries on both side. The government rolled back in and announced reparation efforts. We were delighted. It was the happiest day we'd had in a long time."

"There was this part of the town," Ben continued on, "that had been overrun. We'd lost people in there – not dead people, lost. They were trapped, starving, but the military saved them. Lydia considered leaving them, or so the word goes, but she changed her mind. Now I don't know, maybe she showed a little humanity that day, maybe she just thought she would win our allegiance better if she saved us, but she culled the entire infected force from our own. Over three-thousand of them dead on her orders. She did a good job that day."

"It's a shame she didn't keep those colours," April added.

"Well, she didn't keep any colours for any period of time. Lydia… was an actress. She'd present herself to the people one day as a leader, someone they all rallied behind; the next day she was a nervous wreck, all twitching. She was fearful and she was to be feared, she was hopeful and hopeless. She was the worst part of what humanity had left, and she was the best. She kept us going for a while. We trusted her."

"So, year ten, they start building this facility. Hunters started to find out about the city, a few big militias hit us. They hit us hard. We used to have twenty-something tanks, then we had ten, now there's only five left… The army did well in pushing them back, but not well enough. We needed help. And so the wall came in. It's huge, a large section of the town before was in there. They let us all in, fed us at first, but then a militia came. They were trying to starve us out. They didn't care – they wanted our guns, heard we had tanks. We tried to fight back but it wasn't working. People were fighting everyday over every little thing. People couldn't leave. Lydia took action eventually – she sent out the heavy artillery. Bombed them with spores she found, had them designed. She used cordyceps as a chemical weapon against the hunters, turned them into those things."

"We were horrified," Ben said. "It was terrible, but we were saved, so we didn't complain, but we all knew how wrong it was. Even most in the military admitted it was amoral, but nobody cared. We coul get out again. So we went out, slaughtered the infected again. It wasn't too hard this time, we overestimated their numbers. They had food and we stored it up inside the fortress. Fort Salvation we called it." He smiled weakly, at a distant memory, Ellie thought.  _I know what it's like to smile it things that happened long ago._ She thought of heading back to Tommy's town with Joel for the last time. She'd felt so happy as they were walking through the spring paths, rabbits jumping through ditches. What she'd give to see that again.

"But they didn't have enough food. We have it on good authority that the fucking bitch decided, one night, that she needed to cut us loose. All civilians. And she did. Lydia made us leave."

"You just  _left_?"

"We had fought. All the time everyone knew something was coming, that she had been planning something. They'd been stockpiling weapons, setting up large areas in the basement of that damn church. It was so heavily armed, we didn't know what was going on and they wouldn't tell us. Our friends in the military, they didn't know. Lydia's old dogs were the only ones who really knew. When we found out, it was too late."

There was a heavy silence. Tears leaked down April's cheeks and Ben wrapped his arm around her; she nuzzled into him, crying heavily.

It broke Ellie's heart.

_What did this woman do?_

Ben met Ellie's look again, and she saw the gathering wetness in his eyes too. "They took the children from every family, or they took a wife, or a husband, and forced the others out of the wall. If they tried to resist, they killed them. And they did. So many bullets and so many screams. Why they didn't kill all of them I don't know – probably to stop a full riot, imbue people with hope and let them out."

"Why haven't I seen any kids?"

"They never returned them. After everyone left – and it took a long time, there was a lot of blood spilled between the beginning of that night and the end – they just kept them. We don't know if they're still in there, or if they're all dead."

"What do you think?"

"April and I are keeping faith. For our little boy's sake."

Through stifled, intermittent sobs April spoke, and Ellie could only barely make out what she'd said: "He's nineteen now." She sat up; her eyes were all red and puffed, and set deep into the white gaunt shape of her face. "He was eight when they took him from us. Most people might not know the days but I have been counting.  _This town remembers_ , we want our children  _back_."

Slowly Ellie slid to the floor, sitting down. Ben and April were looking elsewhere now.

"Civilians," Ellie said.

"That's what they call us. They brand us as terrorist inside the walls, no doubt, but we aren't. We don't give a shit about them. We want out fucking children back. You don't know what we've tried Ellie," Ben said. "Hostages, doesn't work. Attacking their convoys, it doesn't work. Nothing works against her, hiding inside her fortress."

"What are you going to do?"

April looked at Ellie with a face mixed with confusion and irritation. "What are we going to do?" she repeated. "We're going to bring the motherfucking wall down. There are families in here that have been waiting a long time for the vengeance we want. We want to know if our children are alive or dead, we want Lydia strung up from the church clock tower and left there for the flies. We need closure. We need our families to be able to fix themselves. We want to be whole again."

"You're being honest with me?" Ellie asked. "You're willing to break these fuckers to get your families back?"

April and Ben both looked to Ellie. "Yes."

"Good," Ellie said.

_Because I am too._


	17. Chapter 17

**Author's Note:** I really deeply apologise for how long this chapter took to be uploaded. I had some computer difficulties and then I began discuss the future of my other project,  _Justice League Divided_ , so we were caught up in sequel ideas and how to link it to the current one and things, so that passed. And then I started considering finally posting the first chapter of my other new Last of Us fanfiction, which won't follow Joel and Ellie at all, but I worry that people won't receive it well if it isn't from these two guys. I know you're really fond of them, you see.  _And then_ I became full of ideas for a continuation of the  _Man of Steel_  film, so that's been swirling around. And to top it all off, my laptop broke. So I pretty much finished writing this and then posted it instantly. Enjoy the chapter, there'll be another author's note at the end (spoilers ahoy, so don't be skippin'!).  **Oh, and one more thing...** the next chapter will be an  _Ellie_ chapter, but it will begin at the same time as this one does. So this and the next chapter take place more or less at the same time. The timelines will rejoin again soon, but it's important for now that you see what both characters are doing. ENJOY!

* * *

**A BROKEN MAN**

* * *

They dragged him by the arms and neck into the bowels of the church, down to where no one could hear his screams. He woke up after his ankle was sprained from the way they dragged him downstairs; as he descended further, so did his stomach. He could open his eyes and see the darkness that seemed to be swallowing him whole, but he didn't want to fight. Why? What had changed? He didn't care. Joel didn't care about anything anymore.

They threw him head-first into a small room and slammed the door. Weak light streaked in through the glass, filling it with just enough to make out the colours. All Joel wanted to do was close his eyes and sleep, but he couldn't. He looked around. The floors were old carpet, damp and rotted. Blood speckled it, dark and almost unknowable. But Joel knew blood when he saw it. Joel's trade was blood, and guilt.

In the corner of the room was a little girl. She was huddled in fear, crying. Her hair was short and blonde, her pyjamas were soaked with blood that seemed to glisten even in the dark room. The little girl was shaking a little and he couldn't make out her face. But when she spoke he knew the voice.

"Please don't hurt me."

"Sarah?"

"Dad?"

He lurched to his feet and fell, cracking his knee hard against the ground, and crawled towards her. She moved her hands away from her little face and lit up. Despite the bullet wounds, she could move fine. She wasn't in any pain. Her little eyes, big and wide, lit up when they saw him and she moved towards him. Their arms were so close and he was so close to touching her when she turned to ash before him, and there was nothing but the wall.

Joel lay down on the floor and wished for death.

_Ellie's gone. Sarah's gone. Tommy. Tess._

He felt a hand on his back but he didn't move.

"Leave me alone."

A laugh. "No," she said.  _Her voice…_

He turned, his ankle screamed a little, jerking. Tess was crouched down at his side. "Listen honey, you're not doing any favours by giving up here. There's plenty more things you've got to do."

"I've got nothing more to live for Tess. They're all dead."

"Am I dead?"

Joel pulled himself up to look at her more closely. He looked at the freckles on her face and the straight bridge of her nose. Her hair was done up at the back of her head. She smiled at him. "I'm not sure anymore, Tess."

"D'you want me to tell ya?"

He closed his eyes hard and tears stung them and ran down his cheek again. "Yeah," he answered. But when he opened his eyes again, Tess was gone again. At the back of his skull it stung, a great sharp pain, like a drill into his head. Instinctively he tried to turn his head away from it but it followed him, boring deep into his skull.

He pushed himself back, summoning up the strength from somewhere inside him, somewhere he thought had died, and moved until his back was against a wall. His ankle was still hurting, throbbing, but it seemed tame compared to the agony raging in the back of his skull. A hot, focussed pain; like a laser.

There was a period of time in there – Joel didn't know nor could be try to guess how long – where he thought about praying. There was a time, a longer time than he could remember, where he had a god. Not one he visited at church – not even in this church – but there had been one. Sometimes he apologised for things, sometimes he asked. Once or twice he even begged.  _Help me find a job; help me feed my little girl._ He'd asked a lot of things of that god, and sometimes he had answered.

But there was one night – you know which night it was – where what Joel begged for wasn't provided. He had begged over and over on the car ride into town. They rode past the people on the street, people who were begging just like Joel was in his head, and he had discarded them. Maybe he was to blame as much as God was.

Over and over in his head he heard the bottle smash. It smashed into the fireplace and the fire reared and roared in return. The sound of his father's voice spoke over the fire, low and dark. "What you need to learn quickly,  _son_ , is that the world don't give two shits 'bout you. When you get out into that god-forsaken world, you'll find that out. There's only two things you gotta look out for – yourself, and your family. One of them is more important than the other. Can you guess which one it is?"

_Family._

Joel's dad had been a family man. Demons had followed him all his life, demons were all he'd ever known, but the man had been loyal to his family. Joel had always loved his father and his mother, and he knew when he found out Sarah was on the way that he would be like his dad – he'd be good to her.  _Was I?_

"You were," said a voice, not unlike Joel's own. "You were a good father. You still are, to that little girl."

This was the Tommy that Joel remembered; not the afraid creature that they'd picked up in the town by the dam, but the one that they met when they first arrived. The Tommy that fought for what he loved; the strong Tommy, the smart Tommy. Tommy had always been the smart one. He was his mother's favourite, and Joel was his dad's. No one was left out.

"I let them die."

"Sarah died because of people. Outsiders, people you can't control. She didn't die because you did something wrong. You did everything for that little girl."

"If – if…"

"There's no if's. There's nothing we could'a done different. Every route we took there was someone waiting to hurt us. It was goin' to be infected, hunters, soldiers – it was goin' to be someone. She didn't have to live in this world. Like our own parents."

Joel's blood boiled and he felt hot. Though he didn't know it, Joel's temperature was raging high. His skin was radiating heat. But this was a fever you can't sweat out. A fever that needed help. Salty tears mingled with the sweat and the pain at the back of his head continued; the dull throb in his ankle pulsed on and on.

"Do you think she's dead?"

"Ellie's a strong girl, Joel, but there are bad people out there."

Joel looked Tommy in the eye. He was fading, slowly.

"Am I one of 'em?"

Tommy paused. "Sometimes."

And then Joel was alone.

* * *

He moved in and out of sleep. Sometimes people came to him in dreams, a mix of his past. Other times his sleep was a heavy black, and dreamless. The clank of footsteps moving past the room, sometimes a shadow, disturbed him often. At first he shouted for help, to anyone that was there. He pleaded and lied and told them anything. They never replied. He gave up.

Some nights he dreamed of a low hanging rope suspended from a pipe above a chair. He remembered Bill's partner, Frank. Oh how he envied Frank now. Joel wished that he was back in that car; he could have turned to Ellie and told her, "I don't want to take you to the Fireflies. Let's keep ourselves safe for now."

She probably would have told him no. There was a time, even though he himself found it difficult to believe, that those two did not care much for each other. Joel had wanted the little girl out of his life as soon as possible, and now there was nothing he wouldn't give to have it back. An arm, a leg. Anything to get her back.  _Is she dead?_ He didn't know. He wrestled with the thought. Maybe that bitch was telling the truth – they had Ellie. Why would they kill her? Did she fight? It wouldn't be unusual for her to fight. She always did.

_But she's not stupid._

_No –she's young. She's a young girl with too much energy. Maybe it got her into trouble. You wondered that when you first met her. Do you remember?_

_I remember._

Joel slept again.

**LINE BREAK**

A shape across the door, and then a rattle as keys clanged in the lock. The door slid open and weak light flooded in from outside. It was a weak yellow, but his eyes were overwhelmed anyway – he squinted and saw two hulking shapes, men, to his side. They lifted him by his arms. His ankle seared in pain and jerked, cramping tight and sore. His ankle did not drag like it did before – they lifted him off the ground completely and he went with them. There was no point in struggling anymore. Deep down Joel half-hoped they'd shoot him in the head when he got to where they were taking him. Fortunately, Joel didn't have that kind of luck.

They took him further down the corridor, past more rooms just like the one he had been in. Inside he could heard people talking – more than one; groups of them. If he had been in a different frame of mind he might have wondered who they were, why they were here, imprisoned. But Joel wasn't in a different frame of mind – he was struggling with his own mind, and everything around him was backdrop. As they dragged him down the corridor, Ellie was on his mind. He wondered if she was really dead.

A room further down the corridor, wherein there was a table, a central chair with restraints, and a generator in the corner of the room. The soldiers placed Joel on the chair; he found that his feet did not reach the ground. If he set his foot at the right angle, maybe it wouldn't hurt as much, and when at last he discovered it, he sighed deeply and smiled.

"Something funny, civilian?" one of the guards asked while they were tying his arms to the restraints. He considered putting up a fight, again, but there was no point.

"If I don't laugh you'll cry," said the other.

The two men exchanged an uneasy laugh between them. Joel looked from one to the other.

"By the end of this you'll be crying anyway."

Joel considered it for a few seconds.  _I have nothing to lose._ "The girl I was with. She was hidin'. The woman – the president – she said your men found her. Where is she?"  _If I tell them she's meant to be dead, then they'll say she's dead. Better to let them tell me._

The two men looked between themselves for a few moments before one answered. Joel could see plain as day on their faces that the talk made them uneasy. "That was two days ago. We sent a team out to recover her but she left the two men looking for her dead. Your little girl's probably out there somewhere, either dead or worse. Unless your friends have got her back."

"Friends? What d'you mean, friends?"

"Don't play dumb with us, civilians, we're not –"

The sound of footsteps from the other side of the door, walking down the corridor, made silence fall on them quickly. The footsteps seemed to stretch out forever, as if the corridor beyond that door came from the depths of hell itself. When the door opened, it was a small man that entered. His hair was white and receding, a rim around the side of his head and a few tufts at the back was all that remained.

The man was more or less round, with eyes that seemed kind. The type of man that would give folksy wisdom and play guitar.  _Twenty years ago, maybe,_ Joel knew. It was unwise to base your opinions of people on their appearances anymore. Joel had made that mistake before, many times. He wouldn't again. The way that the two soldiers – who had rifles, when this small man did not – tensed when he entered, standing that little bit taller, he knew he was right. He tried to push that from his mind. There was still a distinct possibility that Ellie was very alive. That hope rested on the tip of his mind.

"At ease, gentlemen. Don't want you strainin' those leg muscles. Reports say we may need 'em soon." The men made no move to reply. The man was carrying a briefcase, and set it down on the table beside the door. He looked down at his striped shirt – the sort that people from Florida would wear – and wiped off some dirt from it. He took his glasses out of the shirt pocket and slid them onto his face. "You two fine men can go. Thank you for your service."

The men saluted and left the room quickly, closing the door. The man that was left with Joel just looked at him, seemingly trying to sum him up. "Hello. My name is Patrick. What's your name?"

"Tommy."

"That's a fine name. It's a fake, but it's a fine name. Tell me your real name, Tommy."

Joel squinted at the man. "My name  _is_ Tommy, jackass."

The man smiled and nodded. There was a chair around the other side of the desk; slowly, he walked around the table towards it brought it around to Joel, dragging it screaming across the floor all the way. He placed it a few feet away from Joel – close enough to talk to him closely, but not close enough that Joel could slam his head into the man's. The man was clever, it seemed.  _Everyone I meet is clever. It's a goddamn curse._

Lowering himself into the chair with a hand on his knee, he said, "It's good to sit down, isn't it? Well, you've did plenty of sitting. And dreaming. Who were you dreaming about?" Joel said nothing; he stared and the man stared back. "I have more than a few questions for you, Tommy. It makes it far easier for both of us if you just answer them. If you have nothing to hide, then we will let you go. I promise. We aren't savages."

"You left me in a room for days," Joel said, "with the stink of my own piss and shit. You didn't give me any food, you didn't give me jack shit. And you sit in front'a me and you tell me that you ain't savages."

The man's face twisted into a confused frown. "What are you talking about? You were fed meals twice a day and you were asked if you wanted to go to the bathroom more than that. You were treated well. Prisoners in here are treated as they should, until they are proven guilty. You haven't been proven guilty, have you?"

This Patrick got to his feet and made his way to the door. He opened it slightly; Joel could see a man on the other side.

Patrick whispered something Joel couldn't make out, but his ears must have adjusted to the sound because he could make out every other word.

"… Did this prisoner have the same treatment as we allow all of our prisoners?"

"Y-Yes, sir. Of course, sir."

"Hm… I see. Thank you. Not to worry." He closed the door.

"Tommy, I have some bad news." Patrick came back to Joel, though he did not sit. He placed the back of his hand against Joel's brow. "It seems you're very sick. And if you're ill, then I'm afraid that you're no use to me. We can't afford to dispense medicine to every straggler." He took his hand away from Joel's brow, observing how it glistened with sweat, and wiped it away on his shirt. His head shook, as if sweat were in bad taste, and he moved to the briefcase.

"You're gonna let me go?" Joel already knew the answer.

"No. We'll have to end your life. Here and now, I think. I'll spare you the drama of a trial and public execution. Our wonderful president is so demanding."

_No, shit. Ellie's alive – I have to get out of here. You might be going insane, but you can lie to him. Tell the man what he fucking wants._

"What do you want to know?"

"Suddenly your mental health improves? I can't say I'm surprised. Can you tell me what I want to know?"

"I don't know," Joel said, stalling. "Can I?"

"I hope you can. First thing's first. What's your real name?"

There were a few heavy seconds of pause where Joel stared at this man. The man, who was for all intents and purposes a torturer, simply stared back; he did not prompt Joel again. "Joel. My name's Joel."

"Joel. Now  _that's_ a name I can get behind!" His hands fell away from the briefcase and clapped excitedly. He moved, like a snake, back to the chair and sit down. His tongue ran across his lips, hungry for more. "Where are your friends, Joel?"

"That woman told me –"

" _That woman_  is your  _president_ ," he spat, and slapped Joel hard across the face. It didn't hurt as much as it left an aftersting; the man's fighting style was likely useless unless he had tools. Joel didn't let his eyes move towards the briefcase. "You'd do damn well to address her as such."

Joel wanted nothing more than to drive his fist into his eye socket, to choke breath from him, to watch the life leave his eyes. Instead, he said, "Sorry." He couldn't help but wonder if he would play submissive to get Tommy back, to find out if Tess were alive; was this just for Ellie? How low was Joel willing to go?

_As low as hell and then some._

"Now, you were saying?"

"The  _president_ told me my little girl was dead, that she was shot for trying to resist." His eyes moved away, stuck on a wall. There was a painting of Christ, he noticed, and the kings above his cradle, looking down.

"Surely there's more than that."

"More? Patrick, I don't know who you think I am –"

"The president believes you are responsible for the deaths of several soldiers and the destruction of our watchtowers. She says you were sighted moving back into town and followed by a squad. Two of those soldiers are now believed to be dead, and your little bitch child escaped, no doubt rescued by others. Where is their base, Joel? Tell me."

"Civilians – what civilians?"

The man's kind eyes stayed on Joel; green, and they always looked like they should be happy. Smiling eyes, Joel's father had them too. "Could it be you're telling me the truth?" He pursed his lips together, still looking at Joel. He was still for a few moments, but then he was in Joel's face and he was screaming. Joel could see his nodules at the back of his mouth, vibrating. His eyes ached at the noise.

And then Patrick stopped and he sat back down into his chair. "This is a tangled web, Joel. Is this what it feels like, then? To be on the outside? Tell me true, did you burn down the forest?"

Joel hesitated, but then he told the truth. "We did."

"Truth! At last! Why?"

"We were sleepin' in a small cabin and then we were surrounded by infected. There were so many of them. It was our only way out, burn down the cabin, and –"

" – and then the fire just made its own way, fighting hard to live."

Joel nodded.

"That's inconvenient. The president won't like that at all."

"It's the truth. It don't matter if she don't like it; it is what happened."

"The president likes it when there's someone to blame. Someone she can point a firing squad at – it gives the people the feeling that they're in control. That the soldiers outside are fighting against a real, living enemy. But fire killing their friends because that's what fire does? She won't like that. There's no one to shoot there." A pause. "Well, there is. She'll shoot you." He laughed, a wheezy laugh, not like before. Soon, the laughing turned to coughing. "I'm sorry, my lungs aren't what they used to be."

"You aren't gonna let me go?"

"Let you go? Heavens no! I'd love to – I mean, it sounds like a great idea and all, but I'm afraid it's just not practical. I made up my mind ten minutes ago when we first came in this room. You knew that."

Joel didn't know that; the hope from the revelation that Ellie was alive was driving him, blocking out negative thoughts. He needed to get back to her, and that was all he could think of. It was distracting him from this man – this Patrick; he was the one that Joel had to overcome here. If he wanted back to Ellie, this man had to be won over, or die. Quietly and carefully, he rubbed his hands against the chair.

"But, maybe I can help you."

"Can you? How's that?"

"These civilians – who are they?"

"They're a terrorist group. They want us dead, the lot of us. Back when we first rolled into town, there was some conflict there. A lot of people lost their kids and stuff, and they didn't realise at the time that if their kid was turning, there was no chance in hell they would get them back. We put bullets in their head. We had no choice."

Joel's arms stopped rubbing against the chair. "You were in this town on that night?"

"Sure was. Part of the National Guard. I was stationed in the middle of the town. Right in the god damn mouth of hell. The president was there too – not physically. She was giving orders from afar, but she was here."

"She gave the orders?" Joel's fists clenched. "She was the one that gave the orders for everyone to be shot?"

"Don't take it personally, son. There were a lot of people died that day. No need crying over the past."

Joel didn't reply. His eyes were on a wall again; his head began to throb and his heart thumped hard against his chest.  _It was her?_

A kind of heat radiated off Joel then; and the atmosphere of the room changed. Patrick sensed it too, moving his chair back. "I need you to be absolutely clear with me," Joel said, emphasising every word. It was surprising he could speak; in his throat Joel could feel the adrenaline surge. "Was Lydia the one who ordered that everyone outside the boundaries be shot?"

"Yes, that is what I am saying. Is that clear enough?" He laughed again.

In the distance, from above, booms went off, a series of low concussions all around them. Patrick's head slowly moved upwards, looking at the ceiling, but Joel's eyes were on the floor.

"Oh dear, that sounds bad," he said, getting to his feet.

The door slid open and Joel glanced up, seeing the guard – it was the one from before. Jarrod. "We have something of a situation." Jarrod came into the room and closed the door. His weapon was out.

"Are you expecting a battle, soldier?" Patrick said, motioning at the weapon.

"Yes I am."

Patrick's arched back straightened as he rose from his chair, turning to fully face Jarrod. "And what side will you be fighting on?"

"The right side."

Jarrod lifted his rifle and looked down the sights, and before Joel could react a shot rang out and the torturer's brains were strewn across the wall, red and wet. He jerked and fell to his side, leaking blood, and Joel's shoes hovered above it.

"Is your name Joel?"

"Yes."

"I've got instructions to get you out of here," he said and began to fumble with the restraints. More explosions from the ground above and Jarrod, growing flustered, reached for his knife and began to cut through them.

"What the hell is goin' on?"

"We the people are taking back what's ours. They've taken the children, well they're not children anymore, but they took them all and – and… I don't have time to explain. You want to see Ellie?"

"Yes," he said, standing, his boot pressing into the blood, though he didn't care. He'd been more covered in blood than this before. "Is she –?"

"She's fine, my friends have got her. She'll be waiting for you outside the walls, I can take you to her."

"I'll find my own way to her."

"What, but Joel –!"

"But nothing. I have things to do. Where does this Lydia go in times like this?"

The man hesitated. "She stays where she is, in the clocktower. You'd never reach her, there are so many guards – all armed, she'll be locked…"

Joel didn't care. He approached the briefcase, opening it, hoping for a gun. It opened easily, as it was unlocked, and found it empty.

"Why isn't there a gun in here? Or anything?"

"It's –  _him_ ," Jarrod said, indicating at the dead torturer. "He didn't torture you. Well, he did, but he did it with games. Played with people's heads. Said that the threat of violence did the trick, not the violence itself. Violence only made people squeal lies louder."

"Sick son of a bitch," Joel muttered. "Have you got a side arm?"

Jarrod hesitated for a moment, but then he handed over his pistol. "It don't have many bullets, so be careful with it. Use it sparingly. And it makes a hell of a racket. If you use it, they'll come down on you. You won't make it out of here. I don't wanna be the one telling that little girl that her daddy's dead."

Joel considered correcting him, but thought better of it. "I'll survive. You see her, tell her to stay where she's at. I'll be back to get her."

"You better be."

Jarrod led a limping Joel back up the corridor from where they'd came after they locked the door to the interrogation room where Patrick's corpse lay in a crumpled heap of dead weight. Joel slid the magazine out of the pistol.  _Seven bullets_ , he thought.

"You aren't going crazy, while we're here," Jarrod said, stopping. "When that son of a bitch came to the door and asked how you were treated. He led you to believe you were treated well. You were treated like shit – he was just toying with you, trying to get you to talk. Seems like it worked, but… yeah, you ain't crazy."

Joel nodded. He didn't know what was real anymore; so many realities, so many characters coming together into one. Sometimes he wished he could live in those fantasies, but no. He had to break away from them; not a broken man anymore, a man on the mend – a man doing what he can for his family.  _Ellie._

But first he had be a family man in a different way, and for a different part of his family. It was time for Joel to get the vengeance he craved.

And he would get it; he would see her dead. And this time, there would be no guilt.

_Only blood._

* * *

**Okay, so, author's PS:** A few discussion points. One, you'll notice I did away with the  _italics_ for discussing Joel's hallucinations. There's a pretty simple reason for this - he's losing the ability to easily tell the difference between reality and his fractured mind's projections. Also, none of the characters that reappear truly have the personalities that they should have. Joel might think they do, but for the most part they're Joel's projections. They talk to him, sure, but sometimes they lie to him, sometimes they tell the truth. He is on a very difficult road, a dark one. I feel terrible for him, and you should too.  _What else?_ Nothing much, but I would  **love** to hear what you've got to say. So drop me a review, follow and favourite to show me some love.


	18. Chapter 18

**Author's Note:** An important chapter, and one I enjoyed writing. I don't really know why, but I found it to be a lot of fun. Ellie's point of view  _is_ fun, and it seems you prefer reading it (she attracts views much quicker than Joel's chapters do, very quickly). Let me know what you think in  **reviews.** They keep me young.

* * *

**ELLIE**

* * *

Ellie couldn't stop thinking about the kids.

She'd tried to push them from her mind, but it always kept back. People moving around the largest room, fitting themselves with bulletproof vests, loading up rifles they'd been training themselves to use for a long time.  _They're all serious about this. They know a lot of them are going to die, and they won't get back their children._ This day, the day they had been training for was here.  _What if Joel and I hadn't been caught? Would they have killed us?_

They kept her in the same room for a long time. She watched through the small window, looking down into the room with all the chairs. All the people moving around, doing so much, doing so little. Ellie could see some of their faces, their expressions, and they meant nothing to her.  _Blank._ Their faces gave nothing away; maybe it was worry, excitement, tension.

The door opened and Ben came in, in his hand was a bulletproof vest and a 9mm pistol.

"This is all we can spare for you."

"For me?"

"I assumed you wanted to tag along," he said.

 _I have to find Joel. At least this way I don't have to sneak after them._ "Yeah."

"It's not going to be easy. If your dad ain't dead already then they might kill him when we attack. We got a man on the inside we sent down to get."

"Why did you spare a man to get out  _my_ friend? He's nothing to you."

The man paused. Ellie could see him rethinking his strategy, his mouth opening and shutting like a fish. "Listen little girl, we're helping you out here. The least you can do is be goddamn grateful that we're helping you out and not leaving your friend to be shot in the head by those bastards."

 _Why are people always so full of shit?_ "What the hell aren't you telling me, man?"

Ben threw the vest and gun down onto a desk, then reached into his pocket and threw down a box of ammunition too. "We were hoping your friend would help us on the inside. We only got two men in there, and we're not sure if we can trust one of 'em. Someone has to take out their defences."

"If you just asked him to help you, he would."

Ben shook his head. "Your friend was asked, and he said no. He's run off. Not that what he's doing isn't any less useful to us, so we let him."

"And what's he doing now, exactly?"

"He's going to kill Lydia, their leader."

Ellie didn't understand, and her face showed it. It squinted up and she moved over, lifting the bulletproof vest. She felt the Kevlar in her hands, maybe distracting herself. "Why would he go kill –  _oh_."

"Oh? Listen, I don't really care. Get the vest on, come find me downstairs. I'll be in screen three."

"What?"

"Can you read?"

"Yes."

"There's big numbers by the doors downstairs. Look for the three." In a further great act of condescension, with his finger he drew a three against a wall for Ellie's.

"Thanks a lot. Sometimes I confuse it with a nine.  _Ass._ " H

At that, Ben shook his head and left the room. The man she had liked not too long ago suddenly seemed different entirely, and she knew then she had to find Joel. She wouldn't find anyone like him again, not really.

_He lied to you._

The thought rose, unbidden, to the surface of her mind. She tried to force it away, but what did Joel lie  _about_? She thought about it sometimes, when she was feeling low. Joel kept something from her, but why?  _Were the Fireflies all dead and he didn't want me to know? What were those clothes I was wearing? Did he take me away from them?_

_Where is Marlene?_

The thought had crossed her mind that Marlene was dead. And maybe she was, Ellie had no idea. She dismissed it when the thought came past, but still it ebbed away at her.  _Joel wouldn't let anything bad happen to Marlene._ It was for the first time then that Ellie realised she'd last seen Marlene in Boston. The Fireflies were dwindling as a force; there was no way she'd make it across half the country by herself without being injured. The more there are, the more chance there is she'd be caught.

_Marlene could be dead out there. Maybe Joel took me to the Fireflies and there was new management. Maybe Joel took me to the Fireflies are they were all dead. Maybe Joel took me to the Fireflies and –_

"Calm the fuck down, Ellie," she said to herself.  _Just focus on getting him back, then ask him everything you need to._

As she fumbled with the straps on the vest she wondered how he was doing; if they'd broken him down. He was damaged when she last saw him – Tommy's death had pushed him over the brink. Bad things were going on in Joel's head, and she wanted so badly to help, but there nothing she could do. The thought made her feel useless and low. She pulled the vest over her head, hair pulling a little. Her fingers worked to untangle it.

The gun was up next. She held it in her hands and then slid the cylinder out. Full, with more ammunition in the box if she needed it.  _I wonder where they're getting the ammunition from._

She stuck the ammunition deep into her pocket, far enough in that it wouldn't fall out, and left the room. It was quiet at first, but as she moved further downstairs – down past all the old movie posters – the noise level rose.  _It doesn't match the clamour of Boston,_ she thought. People were speaking in low whispers here, it seemed, and the only reason it carried so far was the sheer number of whispers. When she reached the lobby area it was flooded; flooded with people moving, walking places with purposes. In the distance she saw some fully outfitted and sitting on a chair, eyes on their loosely clutched rifles.  _They don't think they'll make it back here, to see their children, if they're still alive._

And she knew a lot wouldn't. In distant places Ellie knew there had been fighting. Over beliefs and systems she knew little of.  _Why would you die for something like that? Why would you die for something that wasn't your children?_

The numbers were large, just as she'd been told.  **3** was on the far side of the left corridor. People pushed past – some apologising, others unaware they'd even touched her – with guns that far outrivaled her own small gun. There were guns she'd never seen before; massive cylinders with giant triggers.  _What kind of bullet goes in that?_ Perhaps the same type as the tank had, though she hadn't seen it fire.

The tank in Pittsburgh had caused Joel and Ellie some real problems. It'd taken them what felt like forever to go around it. She'd been scared then, though she hadn't told Joel. There were a lot of things that Ellie hadn't told Joel and wished sorely that she had.  _Maybe I will._

Both sets of doors to  **3** were kept open by bits of wood stuck under . Inside the room was very dimly lit by lights above, casting enough light to see and nothing more. Nobody was leaving  **3** , only entering. They moved up the corridor into the room, and soon she saw why.

There were still chairs in the room, though all had been taken up by people sitting. People were sitting on the floor, guns on their laps, others sat on the stairs and on the balconies. Everyone was sitting; Ellie sat on the floor, near a door that said  **emergency exit.** _May as well be safe._

For a long time it seemed like people were only coming into the room, but then the doors closed and Ben and April moved up onto what looked like a stage. Behind them was a massive wall of black.  _A screen_. She'd never seen one so close before.  _I wish I could see what it looks like on._

The people in the room were silent, Ben and April stood by the screen. All eyes on them, even Ellie's. Their hands were linked.

"We are not your leaders. We do not have a leader, not like them. We're a group of people with an equal say, and we're making this speech because you asked us to. We are what you are, we're people who have had what means most to us taken from us. When the infection hit and we lost our homes and our country, we were crushed. When  _she_ came, you know, I'm not going to lie – I had a little hope that things would get better. Slowly maybe but they'd repair themselves with her help. I have never been so wrong. They came here and they took with what means most to me. They took what means most to  _us._ They took our  _babies,_ our  _children._ Today we  _get them back._ "

The others did not cheer, but they nodded.  _If they make too much noise, they could be heard. But they nod, because that's unity to them._

April spoke this time. "For some of you this about justice, others think about karma and – there's too many words I could use.  _Could_  use. For me there's only one word. I want  _revenge_ on those fuckers. I want us, civilians, the lower castes, to take them down. I want Lydia strung up from a street light with her legs twitching below. They threw us out and made us out to be savages. I am a mom, and if I have to become a true savage to get my kids back, I will." Ben held her hand all the tighter. "We have been planning this for a long time now, because we have failed before. We have been taking them out slowly, and they've been doing the same for us. But now there's not many of us left. Their numbers might be bigger than ours, but we are a unified force. Where they are five fingers, we are a fist. It's time for us to take our children back, take our home back." Tears fell down her cheeks and she let go of Ben's hand, taking a step forward. "It's not about numbers now. The last of us, against the last of them. Let's go to fucking war."

The theatre erupted in screams; a cry for war and blood.

* * *

"We captured one of their guards a while back, and he told us the details of their routines. It wouldn't surprise me if Lydia changed them out of paranoia, but we're going on this. If they get in our way, we'll take them down." Ben and April were near the front of the column of people; they'd walked in small groups to get outside of the town, up a hill, passing by burned out farm houses.

"And why are we going in the wrong direction?" she asked, realising only now that the 'fortress' was a while back.

"To get something."

It was still dark, profoundly so, and even looking back Ellie couldn't see the end of the people. They just seemed to go on and on forever, stretching down into the darkness of the hill.

She'd found out when they'd left the cinema – she with Ben and April – that there was no leader of the Civilians. They made decisions by themselves for one of another, they said. Ellie found it difficult to believe; these people must have argued endlessly, unable to make basic decisions for one another. Where to set up base, where to do things. And sometimes, they did question decisions that Ben made; Ellie heard it happen.

But not once did they question April.

When they reached what seemed like their destination, Ben and April made Ellie hang back with the others. They took a small group of Civilians, with varying guns, away with them. Ellie watched as they walked towards a farm house with a torch, flashing it twice. Soon, a torch inside replied by flashing their torch three times. The torchlight became solid then, but still Ellie could see very little. They disappeared around the back of the house to where Ellie thought she could see a barn, towering over the little house. A great rumbling followed, one that Ellie recognised, and April and Ben returned into Ellie's line of vision, but it wasn't them she was looking at.

Behind them followed to massive tanks on tracks, just like the one that had taken Joel. They moved slowly but together, side-by-side. Murmurs and whispers rose from the crowd behind Ellie; it seemed that most of them hadn't seen them until now. She listened carefully to them, but there was little to focus on. Words she picked up now and there, but nothing substantial. April flashed the torch and the crowd, and they moved over the hill. Ellie sprinted a little to get to the front again, people rushing by her. She wanted to be near April and Ben, the ones she knew.

"Is that how you're going to get in?" she asked when she got near the two of them again.

"That's how  _we're_  getting in, yes," April said. "There's a weak structural part at the back of the wall, where the seams of the metal join together. They defend it, but their own tank is all the way around on the other side by the time we get there. They'll fire at the tank, but it won't do much good. The wall will be done and we'll be in."

It didn't make sense to Ellie. "Won't it just collapse on top of you?"

April smiled. "No. If we fired at the front, yes. There's a tunnel to get through, and they think we believe it's like that the full way around. But it isn't. The back is just coating with a little bit of cement. We blow a hole in the wall, it's just a hole."

They walked around the way, passing through a huge street of empty houses. It reminded Ellie of the street in Bill's town where they'd gotten the car started. Bill and Joel had pushed her as she tried to start it.  _"I know how to pop a clutch."_  Still, it had taken her a few attempts to manage it. She blamed the engine.

It was a forest path that took them around and towards the wall.  _They've probably had this route planned out for a long time._ There were never any questions about the direction they had to take, each turn was accepted. They knew where they were going.

"What will you do if – when you get them back? They'll be grown up by now, won't they?" she asked. The question had occurred to her, and she had no doubt that – if had appeared to her – then it rose into their mind more than once.

For a few seconds there was still only the noise of the tanks crunching down plants and grass, the snapping of branches under heavy boots all the way back into the forest. Maybe two hundred people. More than she'd ever seen at once, more than in Boston, more than Frances' camp.

The first soldiers they came across were in a small patrol group. When they saw the tanks and the Civilians at their side they reached for the radio, tried to run, and were quickly gunned down. They fell, all of them dead, and when the civilians reached their bodies April, Ben and a few others shot them in the head again. April saw Ellie staring.

"It's better they don't suffer. Anything could find them out here."

"Or they might radio for help," Ellie said, watching April carefully. She couldn't tell if April was empathic or cold.  _Doesn't matter what she is, I don't trust her._

"Exactly."

In little time after that Ellie could see the wall. More patrols saw them, one may have successfully managed to radio but Ellie couldn't be sure. Ben tried the trick with the radio again, saying he made a mistake, but there was a pause when they replied and told him okay.

"Chances are they're on to us now. Be ready," he said. "Pass the message back."

The whisper rode its way down the back of the column; Ellie could hear it shrinking away. Marlene had told her a game called Chinese whispers a long time ago, but she'd never played it. There were never many of them. She'd been young enough then to play it, when it was just the three of them. Marlene would tell her the message, then she'd pass it to her mother, and then to Marlene, and then Ellie would corrupt it and pass it on. They'd pretend that it was either Marlene or her mother who messed it up.  _But they knew all along_. The thought made her smile.

When the tanks reached the perimeter of the wall they held back, and the people held back even further. There was a heavy silence where people fell into lines, organising themselves. People had numbers and places; they knew where they had to be.  _They really are a fist_ , Ellie thought.  _But that might not be worth shit if we get shot as soon as we get inside. If I run in and try and hide real fast, maybe they won't see me._

She checked the ammunition in her gun once more, and made sure her switchblade was on call.

April held her hand out; two men sitting on top of the tank watched it. For a few seconds it hovered in the air, half way between up and down.  _Once she gives the signal, there is no going back. Once she gives the signal, people will die. I might die._

Her hand rose.

The people on top of the tanks whispered into the drivers, and they fired.

Great, thunderous bangs… rockets from within sent into the wall, sending debris flying, screeching. Inside there were shouts and outside people wrestled with their own doubt. Ellie watched as a hole in the wall formed, enough to get people through. The tanks fired again first, expanding the walls, giving them enough room to get inside themselves. Their tracks began to move, and lifted them away, into the fortress. Ellie saw the look on April's face; grim, determined.

Both tanks rolled into the structure, and then the people began to march. Guns loaded and clutched tightly, some twitching, they moved in. Ben and April stood at sides of the wall and let others enter. From the other end, some mutterings, but no shots were fired. None.

Ellie went in next, April and Ben behind her somewhere. Around her so many people bunched closely together, but looking around the "fortress" looked more like a ghost town. No people, no infected. Nothing.  _I don't like this._

"Show yourself!" Ben shouted. "Get out here."

"Maybe they're sleeping," said a man, maybe in his early 30s.

They walked forward, further into the town. It seemed like any other part of the town, but the buildings were higher and closer together. In the distance church held a high clock tower on its shoulders. This was the downtown district, Ellie reckoned. Makeshift balconies and railings at the top of the buildings; she ran her eyes along them, looking for any sign of life. She got a sign of life too late. At once, hands rose above it, flinging cannisters of some metal into the crowd. They cracked open at the lid and people moved back, but they did not explode. They raised their weapons to it and then, ever so slowly, the spores began to leak out.

In seconds the air was covered in them, the wind lifting them up and around into people. In the screaming panic people fell over; Ellie breathed them in with no worries.  _Immune_ , but the manic cries of the fallen continued out. She looked around at those still standing; far off, moving to the other side, into a building were April and Ben.  _Are they – wearing gas masks?_

Ellie ran away to the other side, in the opposite direction of April and Ben. The Fist of the Civilians had split into five fingers; five, then four, three, two…

Ellie tucked at the first door she came to and glanced behind her. There was no one there, everyone had ran again beyond the wall or elsewhere. There was a huge explosion that made her turn again and she saw the first tank aflame, ruined. Through the glass of the door she was trying to open she could see another tank advancing towards them both. It took a few seconds for her to find the Civilians' second tank; it did nothing, but spores slowly seeped from the open hatch on top.

Her switchblade jammed quickly into the lock and rummaged a little, rummaged more, until  _click_ , it opened and she entered. Inside there was no one, but even still she looked around before she turned her back. People were rushing towards the door, but she couldn't risk the noise. If they entered they'd shout and scream and they'd find her and she'd never see Joel again. She locked the door.

They banged on the window hard when they reached, their faces red and their eyes redder. Within seconds, gunshots rang out from the balconies above and she saw people crumple outside through the windows. Ellie backed away from the door.

Around her were more guns – a lot of them. She inspected them, trying to block out the bangs on the door behind her and the screams from outside. The firing continued on. After a few seconds of looking at the guns, she looked outside and saw people trying to sprint away – and then falling, bullets riddling their back.  _They knew_ , she thought.  _April and Ben knew this was going to happen. They use the cordyceps as weapons first to spread them out, distract them from firing, and then when they spread apart and loose and drop their guns, they gun them down with no damage to the property._

The tank smouldering in the middle of the road. The driver inside had obviously closed his hatch when they started dropping the canisters, and they had no choice but to blow him up. She ducked, seeing the other tank slowly travelling down the road. A machine gun mounted on top was mowing down more civilians. The streets was full with more dead than alive, more blood than ground.

Footsteps, one pair, coming down the flight of stairs on the other side, likely to check what the noises were, the people banging against the door. They were still there, though now they were just staring at Ellie. She made her way quickly to the wall flat against the stairs, just around the corner, and soon enough a shadow emerged, and then a person. She saw the rifle's shadow before she saw it, and knew she'd have to wait, hoping he wouldn't turn. Luckily, his eye was caught by the civilians first and he took a few steps away, enough for Ellie to get behind him.

"I can't let you in," the man said. "I'm sorry."

His words were punctuated slowly, as if to allow the people at the door to read his lips. Ellie felt half-bad when she placed her blade against his throat. She couldn't risk firing the gun, not in here.

"Drop the gun." The gun clattered onto the floor.

"A group of your friends took a man away with them. The name he gave was Tommy. Where is he being held?"

"What age are you, kid?"

"Old enough to run this across your throat. Where is he?"

The soldier winced a little. "He's being held –"

"You alright down there?" A voice from the stairs.

"Tell him you wanted a different gun," she said, pressing the knife further into his throat. It drew blood.

"I – I'm just changing my gun!"

"Why?"

"It, uh, it jammed!"

"Damn equipment never works," the voice muttered from the top of the stairs, and then his footsteps disappeared.

"Where the fuck is he?"

"He's being held below the church, in the basements! Please don't kill me. Please."

She looked around for somewhere to lock him, but there was nowhere.  _I could throw him outside and – no, it wouldn't work. Nothing would work. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry._

"You'd just come after us."

She slit his throat and left him there, off to find Joel, off to the church.


	19. Chapter 19

**Author's Note:** Thanks for being patient for this chapter, I know some of you were excited to see how it turns out, so here we are. A few things: one, my next fanfiction is  **up** , so if you haven't seen it already - go check it out on my page. It's a little lighter than  _The Last of Them,_ but it's in the same universe in one of the same settings. It's called  _The Hunters of Pittsburgh_  and follows the hunters you encounter in-game (the ones who try and kill you), adding a little humanity to them. As for  _this_ story, this will be the second-last chapter in a little while, maybe over a week. I'm planning ahead for my next story launch,  _Divided They Fall_ , a Justice League story. So far there are four chapters complete, but I'm trying to make my life easier down the line, making updating my other stories easier. There's only much a person can write. Thanks for reading!

* * *

**ELLIE**

* * *

She made her way outside, the sounds of gunfire diminishing but still very much alive. The door Ellie left through she found behind the stairs the guard had come down, but she'd been unable to lock it again.  _Maybe some poor guy will find their way inside through that door._ Her hopes were no more than wishful thinking, and only that. There were few left. As she made her way down a back alleyway, walking between the wall and the buildings, she thought of April and Ben. Surely, they had to be traitors, or were they just thinking ahead and didn't have enough gas masks? She couldn't be sure. All she could be sure of was that it was likely they were still alive.  _If only I could say the same for all the others._

Their faces had been so full of hope, and now the ones that hadn't taken bullets would turn into  _them_. Infected. The bricks of nightmares, slayers of hope…  _Joel,_ she thought. His name kept coming back to her. Further up the alley. Not much longer. Gunshots in the dark behind her, on the rooftops. This time, she thought she heard shots from the ground.  _Please be wrong, please be wrong._ At the end of the alley she pressed her back against the wall and listened carefully. Footsteps, she was sure of it. Slowly she moved her head around the corner, and then snapped it back.

Men were flooding out of the church, gas masks wrapped around their faces and guns in their hands. There was something about them that made them more unsightly to behold than clickers. People's humanity disappeared when their face was behind a mask, when you don't get to look on their face, into their eyes. The footsteps continued for a little while and then she looked around – no guards. She couldn't take the risk of the front door, though; not when they could be all around the street, firing at anything not wearing a gas mask.

She toyed with the idea of finding one, of suiting up, but there wasn't time. Joel was in danger, if April and Ben were truly traitors, and he was being set up –

 _No time to think_. She moved off across the road and slunk down behind a wall that held the church's grass. On the raised level above her, stretching all the way around the back, was the graveyard.  _There must be a way in through there._ She pulled herself up and slid through the fence. Ellie spared a glance down the middle of the street and saw the men in black military fatigues, clutching rifles in their hands and sweeping all alone. Occasionally they stopped above quivering civilians and shot them, rifles twitching in their hands. She kept going around the corner.  _I don't care about it,_ she told herself.  _I just need to help Joel._

A locked door, and another. Another. All locked. She looked around the back of the old church, all the way up. The clock tower had a clock on all four surfaces, giving the time to all directions. She might have been mistaken, but they all gave different times. Ellie didn't care. There were other things to look for.  _Ladders, drain pipes, loose bricks I can use as ladders…_

One more side of the building to go, and she ran as fast as her legs would allow. The gun she'd slid into her trousers pressed against her skin; the switchblade was in her hands. Around the other side she saw the door that seemed to lead down – just like the one they'd taken into the subway in downtown Boston, but smaller and with a wooden door over it. A thick, heavy chain and padlock were draped over the door; she dropped her blade and tugged at it to no luck, and then tried to cut it. Nothing.

She listened; the air was heavy with the sound of bullets.  _One more won't draw their attention_ , she thought.  _I hope._ She brought out the gun and pulled the slider back, then took aim at the padlock's base and fired once. The chain split apart with a spark. She listened for a pause in the firing from the military, but there was nothing. Her hands gripped the chain tight and tugged again; it jingled lightly as it fell apart.

Completely freed of the chains, the wooden doors opened without resistance. She brought the long, heavy chain and padlock into the basement with her, just in case someone walked by and noticed.  _Being discovered at this point would suck._ After she'd closed the wooden hatch again it took her eyes more than a few seconds to adjust to the low light; vaguely she could make out the shape of the corridor and the doors along the side. She had come in at the end of row. She walked down the steps in front of her and then shoved the chain down between the stairs and the wall.

Her gun was out as she moved down the row slowly, looking inside each room. They were all small, damp rooms – made for prisoners, she thought. At the end of the corridor she was faced with the choice to go up or right, and she chose right.  _Have to make sure he isn't in one of these before I move up. If I go up, I might not be able to come back down._ She checked all of the rooms and found little. The last room – the one right at the end – was an exception, where she found a dead man lying beside a chair with restraints.

It meant nothing to her and she closed the door and jogged back a little, turning and going up the stairs. They took her around and up, a spiral. Sometimes she paused and listened, ears pricked for any sound, but nothing carried down the stone steps.  _Keep going. He's here, Ellie._ When she reached the next floor she began to hear people, not shouting like those outside, just talking.

" – no, it's clear now that it worked. No more concerns on that part."

"And what of the prisoner, the one downstairs?"  _Does he mean Joel? They must not know he's escaped._ She wished that meant that Joel hadn't come through this way, but he'd led her through worse before, so there was no way to be sure. She crept forward slowly and looked around the room. Above, there were balconies, and on them –

 _Shit._ She took a step back, back against the wall again.  _A sniper again, holy shit. I hate these things._ They'd dealt with one once they'd emerged from the sewers, a group of hunters that'd taken over a small town. Their leader, a sniper, had been dealt with by Joel, and he had used the sniper to clear the way for Ellie, Henry and Sam to pass through the down when the hunters came in larger strength. "It wasn't easy, I'll tell ya that for free," Joel had said afterwards.

 _I'll have to find another way up_ , she thought and turned back. She drew her gun – knife in her right hand, gun in her left. If she wanted to reach Joel, she'd have to cut her way through scores of –

 _Holy shit_.

There were bodies around the landing of the first floor. The dead did not bother Ellie, but she had a fairly good idea of how they got there. There were three of them, the guns they obviously did not have the chance to fire either still in their hands or fallen to their side. One of them had a nose that had burst open; blood all over his face and the floor. Ellie checked for life signs and found none, and kept going up the stairs.  _If he is going after Lydia, she'll be high up._ To be sure, she looked quickly along the corridor she was on and found all the rooms empty. Ellie rose higher.

The next floor was the same story. Bloodied faces and broken necks. A trail of bodies that led up, always up. One of the bodies had a bullet in his thigh this time. Joel was mowing through them like a storm, a force of nature. It was a fear in Ellie's mind that he wouldn't recover from this, that he was straying a path that he couldn't come back from. One final flight. Blood streaked walls. Bodies on the stairs.  _Keep going._ Her gun was drawn.

"TELL ME!"

 _Joel_.

Ellie sprinted up the remainder of the stairs. "JOEL!"

His eyes flashed in her direction, and for a moment the fear she'd felt not long ago came back, but it faded when he ran to her and held her. "You found me. I was worried for you, Ellie."

Ellie smiled. "You need someone to keep you in check."

They let each other go and Ellie noticed the red-haired woman against a boarded up window; her face twisted into a terrified scowl and she was shaking. Joel looked from Ellie to her. He pointed his gun at her again and Ellie saw the blood on his knuckles.

"Is this – is this Lydia?"

"Yeah." He gritted his teeth.

"Was she the one that – the one who –"

"That is what I am still tryin' to get from her. But yeah. She's the one."

Lydia's eyes filled with tears and her hands twitched madly. "Please,  _Joel_ , that's your name?  _Joel._ Whatever happened a long time ago, it wasn't me. My hands were  _tied_. I couldn't just choose what to do in war–"

"There was a war," Joel said. "There was a war against those who turned. A war against the infected. There was no war between a soldier and a twelve year old girl. You gave the order to put down anyone – man, woman or child."

" _Joel_ , please –"

" **SAY IT** ," he said, screaming at her. She jumped and called out, her hands were up against her face and she was crying. Her eyes were red and puffy and loose stands of red hair clung to her wet cheeks.

"Okay, okay! Yes! It was me, I gave the order!"

Joel's gun arm tensed and he pointed it more firmly at her. His finger went to the trigger and Lydia dived – a true drive. Joel shot the boards on the windows and Lydia emerged from behind the desk; she lifted her wooden chair and threw it at Joel. He was taken unaware and stumbled back, gun dropping to the floor. The president seized her opportunity and vaulted her desk. She was behind Joel before Ellie could raise her gun, slamming Joel's head into her desk. The crazy bitch slapped away Ellie's gun and a shot went off, but then she had Ellie's arm and there was pressure, and she turned and it was Lydia's arm against her throat.

Slowly Joel got to his feet, but Lydia had kicked away his gun. She held Ellie's neck so tight.

"I don't like guns," Lydia said. "But unfortunately it's not possible to get along without them anymore. I prefer using my hands."

Joel gritted his teeth. He was so angry, but if he made a wrong move he'd die, and then Ellie would be next.

 _It was just an act_ , Ellie thought. When she saw the woman cowering and crying with fear, she thought there was a person there – one who was scared of death, who was just trying to survive, but now Ellie saw the truth. Lydia was just a different type of soldier – and if she were a man, she would have been dead already.  _She's just like the men outside, only her mask doesn't protect from gas. It protects from me, but not Joel. He saw through her._

"And now," she said, "I have to decide what to do with you. At least I have a bartering chip. If you'd shot me just a minute ago, we wouldn't be in this mess. Here's a little nugget of advice: if you're going to kill someone, kill them. Don't monologue."

Ironically, it was this very monologue that had given Ellie the time she needed. Slow, she fished her switchblade from her pocket. She was careful to make sure her hands still seemed like they were struggling, but she knew Lydia wouldn't kill her – not until she was certain to escape otherwise. If she popped Ellie's neck open now, Joel would kill her.

She continued to speak, but Ellie wasn't listening anymore. She had the blade in up her sleeve, slowly bringing it out.  _I wonder if he knows what I'm doing_ , but his eyes were firmly planted on Lydia, not Ellie.  _Everyone always underestimates the little girl_ , she thought.  _Some day it will get you_ _ **killed**_.

She slit Lydia's wrists and hands with her knife and she loosened enough for Ellie to spin on her with the knife; she pushed a screaming Lydia to the wall with her switchblade at her throat. There was a few seconds where the only sounds were Lydia's soft cries.

"I'm a person," she said. "I don't want to die."

"Neither did my daughter."

"Please,  _please…_ "

"Ellie, leave the room and close the door."

She looked at Joel, but his eyes were on Lydia. He had his entire arm against her throat, pinning her to the wall. "Are you sure?"

"You don't need to be seein' this."

She nodded. "Okay."

Ellie left the room and went down a flight of stairs, past the trail of bodies that Joel had left. Slumping down onto the bottom stair she examined her hands; they were covered in blood. As she wiped the blood down on her jeans she heard the last high, painful screams of the President of the United States.

* * *

A few minutes after the screams died down, Joel left the room and joined her on the stairs.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Yeah. You?"

"Yeah."

For a minute they sat in silence. There was no tension between them, nothing to tear them apart. They were together again and Ellie was happy about that. She didn't know if she could be  _more_ happy about that. She wondered if now was the time to ask about the Fireflies, to ask about Marlene.

"We should get going," Joel said rising to his feet. "They'll come to see her soon. We might be able to escape if we go now."

They started to walk downstairs, keeping their voices low. "Have you looked outside? We aren't getting out of here easily. They're patrolling the boundaries of the wall – we wouldn't get out."

"We'll find a way. Come on."

Down the way Ellie came up. When they reached the floor with the snipers, Joel told Ellie to wait. He slowly made his way along the corridor, towards the main area, and peered through. There was a great squeaking of doors and an immensity of footsteps; Joel took a few steps back and turned. "We got to go," he said. "Now. I don't know how –"

"Follow me."

She led Joel to the basement again, descending the stairs. As they descended the spiral staircase, Joel seemed to speed a little. "This is where they kept me."

"Oh. The dead man?"

"Wasn't me." For some reason, she felt reassured at that.

"Who was he?"

"A torturer. He thought I was part of a resistance group."

Ellie explained where she had been to Joel; she explained the history she knew, the civilians and the government, as best she could. He listened and nodded when he was meant to, reconciling Ellie's tale with his own. She told him about Ben and April and their possible betrayal, about the children. But Joel wouldn't tell her what happened him, not until later – and only if she asked.  _And I will._

They reached the trapdoor. "I'll go first," Joel said. He moved up the stairs and lifted the wooden hatch a little, just enough to peak out. His eyes ran along the crack, not missing anything. When he felt it was safe, he pushed open the hatch and moved out quickly.

"It's good to be outside again," he said.

"Outside is overrated. What will we do?"

Joel closed the hatch quietly. Ellie noticed that the night was still and silent; no more did gunshots shatter the quiet. "How safe was the way you came?"

"Uh, I dunno. I mean, there was only one guard. They'll have found him by now."

The implication hung between them for a moment, and then Joel put his hand on Ellie's shoulder. "I'm glad you're okay, Ellie." His head turned and looked down the street, Ellie stained her neck to see too – the guards were a far smaller force. "The bulk of them have gone inside, I think. Where are the civilians?"

"They… they used spores as – a weapon." Joel shook his head. "And then they gunned them down. They have tanks now. One more."

"Come on – we'll head through those buildings." His finger pointed to the buildings directly across from the set that Ellie had come through, so she nodded.

Across the open road to the buildings with little problem; a tank not in use provided good cover. There was a few seconds where Ellie considered asking Joel if they could take the tank, blow their way out and never come back, but it was a bad idea in her mind, it would be a bad idea aloud.  _They'd get another tank out and blow us up._ The image of the other tank exploding played in her mind. She thought of the man inside, what he went through, and felt sad for it.

Joel held his hand out when they reached the door, and Ellie knew what he wanted. She put her switchblade in his hand with no hesitation; he jammed it into the lock and after a few seconds it clicked open. "I've gotta get me one of these. Mine keep breakin', and it's a bitch to find parts for a new one."

He opened the door slightly and brought out the gun he'd taken from Lydia. It stretched out into the darkness and swung around the room, clearing the corners. "There's no one here," Ellie said.

Joel crouched down a little, listening hard. "I'm not too sure about that." He kept his voice low.

They pushed onto into the darkness, which Ellie reckoned was once a shop of some sort – but it had been repurposed. There was a medicine cabinet and Ellie knew that there would come a time where they needed it, but they couldn't break it. When she looked at Joel he shook his head; there were people here, somewhere. All they had to do was move through the buildings, all of them linked up by doors created by the military. They approached the adjoining section to take them into the next building and heard the voices. Two of them, laughing and joking, it seemed. A soldier had his back to Joel and Ellie; he handed his gun to Ellie and pulled the man into a choke-hold, strangling him till death.

Ellie moved out and alternated between aiming at both of them. "What the hell did you do?" Joel followed up behind her, standing to her side.  _This is my fight._

April and Ben both stood. April moved towards her. " _Ellie_ , we thought that you'd – we dreaded to think –"

"Shut up and sit down," she said. With an uneasy glance between them, they did so. "What did you do?"

"We – we were just  _prepared_ , Ellie," Ben said. "Joel, isn't it?" He tried to appeal to Joel. "It was a bad time, I know you understand. They used spores as weapons. I'm so sorry about Ellie."

"What about her?"

"Ellie is infected, Joel."

Ellie and Joel shared a look that strayed dangerously close to a smile.

"Really?"

"Really. We saw her breathe in the spores."

 _They're trying to turn Joel on me, the bastards._ Ellie walked towards Ben and then slammed him in the temple hard with her pistol. "Answer me." Drawing back from him, she threatened. "What did you do? What the fuck did they pay you?"

April and Ben looked to the floor, words failing them. "Lydia promised to give me my son back."

"And what about everyone else's?"

"Dead, a long time ago."

"So why keep yours?"

April's eyes glossed over, tears, but Ellie didn't trust them. She'd lost her tolerance for tears. "She wouldn't kill him – not her own nephew."

"You're sisters," Ellie said. She nodded.

"Why didn't you just come back here, back to the fortress? She wouldn't have told you no – instead you have to bring two hundred people into this, all of them dead?"

Ben spoke this time, wrapping his hand around his wife. "We argued with her before, she said she wouldn't let us back. Never spoke to us again directly, always through another. She said we could have him back if we… if we…"

"If you brought innocent people in here to die," Ellie said.

"Innocent is a strong word to throw around," Ben spat. "We did what we had to, for our  _family._ What would you do for your own? Tell me. Would you let two hundred people die to get him back?" He waved his hand in Joel's direction. Ellie glanced at his face; expressionless. "You would. Don't act like you're both  _above_ us. We saw a chance to get our child back and we  _took it._ "

Ellie was torn; she didn't know if they deserved death or if they deserved to live, to see their son again. But Ellie would not make that choice. Someone else already had.

Ben's head burst in a frenzy of bone and blood. The sound of the bullet was first, and then the sound of April screaming. Joel swung on the shooter and fired at his hand, the gun tumbling as blood spurted out.

"You  _traitor_ ," the man said, "you disgusting, fucking  _JUDAS_!"

"Jarrod," Joel said. "Calm down."

"I won't fucking calm down, they killed my friends! My family!"

He reached for the gun again and Joel lunged at him, punching him in the face. Joel stuck his foot on the gun and slid it back towards Ellie, who picked it up. April screamed over the body of her husband, and then she made a move for Jarrod too. He punched her hard across the face and she stumbled back. A fistful of her hair in his hand, he twisted it and she tried to go into it, screaming at him, cursing. He grabbed her by the throat and, though Joel tried to intervene, tugged at her neck.  _Once, twice, three times_ , and then her neck cracked and she slumped to the floor, dead or near enough for it to make no difference.

Ellie's hand was shaking a little; her eyes flickering from one body to the next. The man – Jarrod, Joel had called him – had shaking hands. She recognised the man, though she couldn't say where from.  _Was he one of the men that brought Joel here?_

"They fucked over all of them. Every one. They gave them hope and then they killed all of them." Jarrod stared at April's body; Joel shifted uneasily on his feet and then moved back towards Ellie.

"What will you do, Jarrod?"

"I'm gonna end this place."

"How?"

He stared at April's body, saying nothing.

"Come on, Ellie. We gotta get out of here."

Joel and Ellie fled, leaving Jarrod and the corpses of people that had once been his friends, his confidants. Out into the fresh air again. The hole in the structure was guarded. For a long time Ellie and Joel lay hidden, waiting behind a dumpster. The guards did not seem to take breaks, but then something happened. Guards began to scream and shout, and the guards at the tank-sized hole left their posts, running.

 _Maybe they found Lydia,_ Ellie thought.

But when they got to the exit, the two of them looked back and saw what had caused the screaming.

"Was it him? Jarrod?" Ellie asked Joel.

Joel nodded. "Revenge."

Smoke from an explosion drifted out into the town, spores tangled in with it. It sank to the floor, sweeping down across the soldiers that were trying hard to escape and run from it. They fumbled for their masks and the spore smoke swallowed them whole. If they didn't suffocate, they would soon turn.

And for that, Joel and Ellie had no intention of being there.

* * *

 **Don't forget** to review, follow and favourite. You  _can_ leave a review as a Guest, I don't mind, I just love hearing how people think the story is going. Thanks for reading!


	20. Chapter 20

**AUTHOR'S NOTE/** Hi there. I want to thank all of you for sticking with the story and the characters. It means a lot to me, really. I've had a lot of fun writing this and I hope to continue it some day, but this will likely be the last chapter for a little while. A week, maybe two weeks, three. But it will come back, don't worry. The characters will return, loose strands of plot will be resolved. I hope this chapter seals up old wounds in their lives and only opens one, and that will be the basis of the return. Act One has been the Spring arc; Act Two was the Summer arc, and what will be Act Three returns to the Fall arc, which was where  _The Last of Us_  the game opened with. As an ending of sorts, this chapter has a lot of parralles with the end and beginning of the game, as well as the first chapter of this story. I hope you enjoy reading it; I sure have enjoyed writing it. Please  **review,** let me know what you thought of the story up until now. Tommy's death, Maria's death, the arc involving Frances; Lydia, April, Ben. All characters that feel as though they were a part of the game because they've been here for so long, but weren't. Some of them only appeared four or five chapters back. Amazing. Thanks for reading. Make sure to follow so you are notified when the next chapter will be released, and review. Let me know what you think of this chapter. It's been a fun ride.

* * *

**ELLIE**

* * *

Out past the forest and through a residential block until they reached a row of houses, all apart from one another. Further down the road lay the farm the Civilians had kept the tank in; the vehicles that April and Ben were bringing in just to relinquish them.  _None of that matters anymore_ , she told herself as she swung herself over a fence, walking towards a house.  _It's all behind us now, like everything else._ Joel and Ellie had endured and survived.

"We've been walking for long enough, Ellie. I think it's maybe time for us to sit down for a little while," Joel had said not too long after they left the burning fortress.

"Where?"

"We'll go to a house."

Behind her she could still see it off in the distance, even in the dark could you make out the thick black smoke waving above it. Mingled among the smoke were spores, though there was no evidence of that from so far away. Ellie didn't know why she was so calm; maybe because she had Joel back. He was walking ahead of her, saying very little since they left, only to update their directions and if prompted. Maybe it was for the best, there would be time to talk later. Now was a time to think, and Ellie had a lot to think about.

Thoughts rolled through her head. Marlene. The Fireflies. Salt Lake City.

So many questions, and even more answers still. She wondered if she had thought of all of them – if anything Joel could tell her would surprise her, shock her. Could she hate him for what he told her? She didn't know that. She didn't know much about how she felt.  _Numb._

"What house will we stay in?" she asked.

Joel hesitated for a moment, looking around, but he didn't change his course. "This one, I think."

The front door was closed, but not locked. Some of the windows were smashed inwards. On the porch sat a wooden table and chairs. Further down the street some houses were black with ash, their roofs half caved-in.

"What happened to those houses, do you think?"

Joel paused at the front door and looked down the street. There was a long silence before he spoke. "Probably accidents mostly. On the night people were runnin' everywhere, nobody would notice a candle dropped from the dining room table. But then it caught on the carpet, spread its way along to the curtains and soon the house would be ablaze. All an accident. I wonder how many people died of accidents on that night."

"You think it was on that night?"

"Oh, yeah. Cars everywhere, clogging the streets. Infected springing out from bushes and runnin' at cars, slammin' against the windows with their fists clenched."

"The first night was the worst?"

Joel's head turned to Ellie and looked at it for a long time, and then he sat down on the porch, hands on his knees. "No, the first night wasn't the worst. The second night was, and the third. It ain't losin' something that's the problem, Ellie. It's way after that – when you go to reach for it and it ain't there." His eyes glazed over and he looked out across the street; his eyes were aimed at another street but he wasn't seeing it. "When you wake up from a dream and you've got to face the loss again when you wake up. That's the worst part. Dealing with the loss again and again." His eyes focused again and he turned to Ellie, who was leaning against the wooden porch frame. "The first night wasn't the worst. Come on, let's get inside."

Joel went in first. The house was cold and empty; on the right there was an old flat-screened television that had fallen off the wall. The entire downstairs was largely open plan. The two of them walked in and had a look around. Joel trailed off towards some cabinets, Ellie walked to the kitchen, past the dining room table. There was a phone on the kitchen counter, just left behind. Nobody cared about their phones when the world went to hell.

Next she checked the fridge. There was a note, pinned up by some form of metal block.

 _I'm going to be home_  
late tonight. Go ahead  
and order food.  
See you in the morning.

_Dad._

There were newspaper cuttings there too, but she didn't read them. The house was nice, she had to admit. There was something strange about it. She looked out back through the sliding doors behind the dining room table; another porch and a swing with a tyre on the end, swinging in the light wind.

"It's weird to think a family used to live here," she said, approaching the photos on the wall, just by the stairs. Joel was looking at them too, and only then did she realise.

Joel with his arm around a little girl, her hair short and blonde. He looked so young, no wrinkles under his eyes and only a light touch of hair around his face. They were smiling into the camera, holding each other tight. Ellie looked to her side; he just stood there crying silently, eyes locked on the picture.

"This was your house."

"Yep."

"We don't have to stay here."

"No." He put a hand on Ellie's shoulder and turned away from the photos. "We don't, but we should. When you said you wanted to come here, I knew we'd come here sooner or later." He looked around the house. "It's been a long time."

"How long?"

"I don't know. Lost count of the days. I tried to keep them at first but one day was as bad as the next. Some people tell me it's been twenty years. That's the normal number. Twenty."

"It would have to be, I'm almost fifteen."

He walked over to the sofa and sat down on it. "Sarah was sleeping here when I came in, talkin' loud on the phone. The economy – the world's money – wasn't doing great, so I'd lost my job again. Tommy was helpin' me, but there was a limit. We didn't always get along. So I comes in and she's lying here, and I woke her. She jumped up, checking the clock. Sarah got excited about everything. There wasn't much that didn't put a smile on her face. Reached away and brought out a box, a present." He lifted up his hand and brushed his hand against his watch. "She got it fixed for me, this watch." He laughed, remembering, but Ellie didn't say anything.

This was Joel's time.

"She fell asleep not long later and I carried her up to bed. I had to go meet with someone about a job, I left a note… is it –?"

"Yeah, it's still there."

"I hurried out, forgot my phone and everythin'. Just needed a job. That was all I was thinkin' about… so out I went. You know, we didn't even lock the doors. You trusted people. The neighbours were your friends. We used to have barbecues together, the smell of it in the air whilst you watch football together, shouting whilst the kids run around, screaming at each other. The women gossiped in the corner… I came back that night, and everything changed. She was dead a couple of hours later."

"She died – on your birthday?"

"Close enough, yep. Haven't celebrated one since."

"Next time."

Joel smiled. "Next time."

For a long while they just sat together on the sofa; it was still comfortable. Ellie thought about all the places that they'd been. She remembered David; meeting Tommy and Maria; Bill's town, the giraffes…

"Come on and I'll show you around," Joel said after a long time, getting to his feet. Outside the sun was rising, breaking out pale pink prisms across the sky. They went upstairs first, into the room right across from the stairs. It was big inside, a television on the wall. Garbage was all over the floor, the mattresses and covers all wrangled up. "I'll bet it looks like I was attacked in here," he said, laughing a little. "I wasn't. I was just a messy kinda guy. Every year on Christmas it would only get worse. I kept Sarah's presents in here. She'd come in and wake me up and jump on the bed and throw things at me to get 'em. Then, together, we'd go downstairs and she'd see them all set out, but my room was a mess from clearing out the cupboards for space."

He walked across the room and opened up the cupboards, still finding clothes inside them; most of them lining the floor. Ellie smiled. There was something she liked about the idea of Joel being messy. She was too.

"Was Sarah messy?"

"I suppose you're about to find out."

They left the room and walked along the corridor; it seemed to take forever. She glanced into the bathroom and saw an old newspaper lying on the floor. Joel hesitated at the entrance to Sarah's room. His hand hovered in mid-air by the handle, unmoving. The door was closed, and maybe for good reason. Ellie didn't push him, but she placed her hand on his upper arm and smiled at him.

"We don't have to go in."

Joel shook his head. "Naw, but I think we should. Unfortunately we only got the two rooms, so you will have to sleep in here."

That made Ellie feel uncomfortable. There were ghosts in this room, and she wasn't sure if she wanted to share with one of them. But when Joel eventually pushed open the door, all thoughts of ghosts disappeared…

The room was beige and pink. From the windows hung deep turquoise curtains, and every wall was covered in posters. Some of them Ellie recognised from when they'd been in the cinema, where the Civilians were based. There were posters for groups of boys and movies; books were lined up in the cabinet to the left of the door.

Joel went in first and looked around. "Just like she left it. I'm surprised nobody's broken in." He walked up and sat down on the bed and reached out, above the phone and underneath a poster of a wolf. "Pictures of us all." His hand pointed. "There's me, only much younger. Tommy. Sarah." His hand took another posted off the wall and turned it over, looking for something. "This was Sarah and a bunch of her friends. That's her friend's mother. I can't remember their names. I can't."

He pushed the photograph back up on the wall, some hard blue stuff holding it there, and got back up. The chest of drawers was next. There was something there that caught his attention and he lifted it up; a card. On the front a green dinosaur was smiling, above it a declaration of congratulations.

"What's that?"

"I'm not sure."

Joel opened it up and read aloud.

" _You're not a fossil, yet. Happy birthday._

_Dear dad, let's see._

_You're never around, you hate the music I'm into, you practically despise the movies I like, and yet somehow you still manage to be the best dad… every year._ " Joel stifled a sob. " _How do you do that? Happy birthday, pops. Love, Sarah._ "

Joel half-laughed, half-cried. It broke Ellie's heart to see him like that.

"I've said it before, but you'd have liked her."

He sat the card back down and left the room. Ellie stood there looking around, feeling like she was in a holy place that wasn't be to be disturbed; she didn't belong there – it was Sarah's place, it could never be hers. But at the same time, there was a certain homely element to the room. It reminded her that she was real and alive and that Sarah was not.

 _I'll keep him going, Sarah_ , she promised, looking at a photo on the wall.  _We'll all keep going._

* * *

Ellie followed Joel downstairs and struggled to find him at first, but soon enough she found him, standing in the doorway to the office. He was staring at something, and Ellie had to go to his side it see it. The skeletal remains of someone lay there, dead. Fungus had sprouted from them, rooting them to the ground.

"Joel, spores! –"

"Nah, he's been here too long. Any spores he gave out are long gone out that door."

The door was made of glass, and the glass was broken all around the floor in front of it. With a tug he lifted it off the ground, cracking it from the ground; the fungus kept it together in a single unit, though even when he pulled it outside there were still some scrapes on the floor, flakes of the fungus. Ellie knew she was immune, but the fungus still crept her out a little. She wondered who it was.

Joel came back in. "Good to see you've met the neighbours."

"That was…?"

"Yeah. Jimmy Cooper."

"You knew him?"

Joel nodded.

"Fuck, Joel. I'm sorry."

"Long time ago. He attacked us. It was just a sign, I guess. A sign of all the hell to come."

_A sign of how you'd do anything to protect the people you care about._

"Marlene told me she had a family once, and I was a part of it. She said she would have done anything for me."

"Yeah."

Ellie and Joel looked at each other for a long time before either of them spoke again. Eventually, Ellie said it. Something that had been weighed on her mind heavily for a long time.

"I want you to tell me what happened in Utah."

The silence between them was heavy and crushing. Ellie could feel Joel's mind ticking over; she could tell that he was weighing all the options, though his eyes were glazing and slipped out of reality again. She needed to know; if he said he wouldn't tell her, she wouldn't be happy.

"Why?"

"We've been through everything together, Joel. Sand and snow and fucking hell. I deserve this. I deserve you to trust me. Tell me."

"I'll tell you."

"Swear to me," she said. Ellie stared deep into those brown eyes. "Swear to me that  _everything_ that you're going to tell me is true."

"I swear."

"Okay."

He took Ellie to the sofa and told her. He told her everything.


	21. Chapter 21

**Author's Note:** _Surprise!_  The planning for this arc went a lot quicker than I expected. I've decided to try something new. This chapter introduces the flashbacks. These take place some time before the events of the game, before Joel and Ellie knew each other. I toyed at length with the idea of creating a new story, detailing the time before Joel met Ellie, where he met Tess and Robert, the time leading up to the fall out with Tommy. There's a great story in there. I don't want to say too much, for that'll spoil it. I think the flashbacks (although, they aren't  _really_ flashbacks, some of them will be long swathes of story) introduce an interesting layer to the story. They make the tale of  _The Last of Them_  a sandwich: you have my story running both  _after_  the events of the game,  _and_ before. That should be fun. I'll include a little more information on why and how in the next chapter, but for now, it's probably better to just let you read than tell you all about it.

* * *

**JOEL**

* * *

"Keep low or you'll get us both killed, Tommy."

The spotlights dragged themselves across the ground with no haste, easy for them to avoid. In the distance cars rumbled along, no doubt with guns and lights mounted on the back, patrolling the roads. They'd had no run-ins with them yet, but the night was still young. If tunnels and debris and hills of loose dirt weren't blocking the trail behind them, Joel might've been able to see the sun collapsing down into the horizon. As it stood currently, the lack of light didn't bother Joel much.

"There's no one around these parts. We'll be fine."

"Or so you think until you find some patrol has been shufflin' around in the dark quietly. Use your head."

He couldn't see it, but if he had to place a bet – Tommy was rolling his eyes.

Walls had collapsed and broken to bits, blocking their path. Joel followed the block along, Tommy never more than a feet or two behind him. They both had guns, but only Joel held his in hand. As a general principle, he tried never to stray too far from it. Sometimes Tommy used a dagger he'd found in a museum a long time ago, but Joel considered them too difficult to use – your hands had to be smaller, quicker.

In any case, for someone without much speed, he found the way forward in no time at all.

"You want us to go through that?" Tommy asked.

"C'mon. I'll boost you up."

Eyes rolling again, Tommy stepped forward. Joel lowered his hands and Tommy jumped up. He slid himself into the hollow cylinder of concrete and twisted around to lie on his stomach. His head popped out, and two hands followed. Joel took a few steps back and ran at the wall, feet scraping against rough wall below it.

Tommy pulled hard and Joel's feet came off the ground higher, and higher. Joel snapped a hand away from Tommy and it gripped the cold wet concrete. His leg swung up and, finding the ledge, he pulled himself up.

"Lead the way," Tommy said, and – standing – moved for

They got to their feet and began to walk, Tommy sticking close behind him; it was big enough for them to walk and for their feet to keep flat, but they wouldn't be able to stand shoulder-to-shoulder.

"How much further?"

"Not much," Joel said and brought out a map. Outside rain began to fall; it beat down heavily on the concrete above. Joel wondered how a massive pipe like this had reached out, but dismissed it.  _It doesn't matter_ , he thought, and looked at the map.

There was a red  **x**  in the middle of a grid point; Joel traced his finger along a block and found the actual meeting spot. The smugglers had been careful, and when Joel had demanded a map, the deal had almost been broken. Eventually, they had decided to declare the meeting spot – but not exactly.  _The smugglers are careful._

"Not far from here." He kept his voice low, in case the echo betrayed them both. His hand hovered in the air, but not leaving the cylinder. "Those cases. See 'em?"

"I see 'em."

"Around there."

Joel around and saw nothing in the immediate vicinity; there was an empty bridge with an off spotlight, maybe broken, a few hundred metres away. No cars littered the road he was now on-level with, raised by the old empty cylinder.

"Ready?"

"Yeah."

Both of them jumped off the cylinder, first Joel and then Tommy. Dust and dirt was kicked up when they fell, loose stones skirting down the slight hill. For a moment they stood there, gathering their bearings. Recently, Joel had started wearing a backpack, but the weight of it still dragged him down a little, made him unsure of the way he moved.

"This way?" Tommy pointed down; the ground descended to the bottom and then up again, in a kind of mock valley. At the bottom, a stream passed through the dirt, turning it into soggy muck, flowing back in the direction they came from.

"Yeah."

Down the hill and then followed the stream backwards, towards their destination. Ahead of him was the great concrete fortress; spotlights were off to the far right, pointed at an entrance.  _An entrance that doesn't open._

They followed the little stream for a few minutes and then turned left again, passing by what looked to be the remains of an old cabin. Around the area, there were sewer openings blocked off by stone, either from what had happened before or done so by the ruling authority. It didn't matter – they were off-limits, in any case.

But, if he'd learned anything in the fourteen years since Sarah died, it was that it was that things were rarely as simple as they seemed.

There were bookcases all around, some facing towards them and others simply side-on. Walls that joined nothing but the floor, sides of buildings fallen long ago, their bricks half turned into dust. On the floor there was glass too. Tommy stood at Joel's side, looking at the bookcases.

And now all Joel had to do was speak the password.

" _Sarah_."

Figures emerged from behind the bookcases and the walls, their silhouettes revealed no features but the shape of their bodies and the rifles in their hands.

"You got the cards?"

Joel glanced over at Tommy, but he was already sliding his arms out of the backpack. He unzipped it and reached in. His hands fumbled for a moment, clumsy, but then out they came. The ration cards were bound tightly with string, bundled up. Tommy tossed them to the smuggler that had spoken.

There was a scrolling sound, one Joel likened in his mind to the sound a counting machine made. The smuggler nodded a few times.

"They seem real enough," he said.

Joel nodded. "That's 'cause they are."

"Alright. Let's get you inside. Keep your mouths shut all the way in. You hear me?"

"We hear you," Joel said, and Tommy echoed something similar.

Most of the smugglers disappeared into shadows, retreating, but a few remained. The one who had spoken raised his hand and motioned for Tommy and Joel to come. He still wasn't sure if he could trust a bunch of smugglers.  _As bad as hunters_ , and Joel had heard their leader – maybe the man in front of them – was an arms dealer in Boston too.

Joel wondered why the hell he wanted into the goddamn city.

_I don't. Tommy does._

The smugglers took them a winding path, through tunnels and old corridors; a ladder down a wall and then across a grassy area that smelled thickly of moss, smells that hadn't filled his lungs in a long time. Only their footsteps and the wet creak of rotting wood made a sound, none of them spoke the whole way.

Until they climbed a ledge. The smuggler tapped lightly with his knuckles against a wall – Joel's eyes were tricked. What he thought was a solid part of the wall was wooden. Slowly, it began to fall away and light spilled into the dark, stone room.

Joel and Tommy entered the room together. Fire lit it up, burning contently in front of a chair in a stone makeshift fireplace. He glanced behind him and saw it was a bookcase that had slid away from the wall. They moved it back over once all parties cleared the area.

"Welcome to Boston," the smuggler who had spoken before announced. Joel recognised his voice.

"For a city that had the hell bombed outta it, it sure is cosy in here." Tommy was looking at the fire longingly. It had been a long time since they were in a place completely safe from infected.

"The inner city got the worst of it. Buildings are all leanin' to the side." The smuggler shrugged. "We only know what we can see from here. Nobody goes there."

"Did the bombs work?"

He hesitated. "Maybe. I don't know. Personally I don't think so. They're like damn cockroaches. In any case – still, welcome. This here might be the safest place in the whole United States. Over there," he pointed, "are the supplies those ration cards bought you. It's not much."

"Bullets?"

"Two, but from the looks of it, it's not the gun you have. Oh well, I'm sure you'll adapt."

Inside, Joel resented the man. He didn't like the look of him, the smell of him. Joel could smell pathetic a mile off, and this man had it. A petty creature, but he'd got them into the zone.

_For eight month's hunting._

"If you need anything, you just give me a holler… for the most part you're on your own now. Boston's a big place and I doubt you'll make friends. Luckily for you two, you got each other. What are your names again?"

"I'm Joel. This is Tommy."

"Brothers?"

"Yeah."

"Good. Blood's thicker than water and all that." He started to walk off down the corridor, the other smugglers following him. The fire danced across his face; his hair was receding and held back, falling around the back of his neck. His forehead was flat and his nose a broad triangle.  _Face of a rat._ "It's a pleasure doing business with you and all. I look forward to seeing you again."

"Yeah."

The man began to stalk off down the corridor, when Joel called him. "Wait."

"Hmm?" he asked, the wall blocking the fire, his face concealed.

"What's your name?"

The smuggler laughed. "Oh. The name's Robert. Pleasure to meet you." He dipped his head and left the room.

**)-(-)-(**

Ellie was so close to him – only a room away – but there was an incredible distance between them. A distance that spanned islands, all the land they'd crossed, Boston to Wyoming to Texas. Joel didn't know how she felt; she didn't want to say it aloud. He knew that feeling.

For a long time after Sarah died, he wouldn't say her name. Saying it aloud would give her death substance, would give it power. It made it more real to him. And in the months after her death he didn't want reality at all. He wanted to go back.  _It took me months, it's been three days for Ellie. Give her some more time._

So he understood why she wouldn't speak to him – it would make what Joel did real. He killed someone she loved and trusted.  _And Ellie still thinks that Marlene was doing the right thing. She wasn't doing the right thing._

But there was only so long she could stay up there. Every night, patrols on foot went by the house. Sometimes they came too close to entering the house, close enough for Joel to ready his gun and call Ellie downstairs. But when she was there, she said nothing. There were no quips.

Joel glanced at the note on the fridge. He remembered writing it in a busy scrawl, having to leave, and wondered if Sarah had seen it.

He looked through the living room and peered into his old office. Ellie was sitting on his chair, spinning. The chair turned back and forth, but Ellie wasn't facing him. Joel's eyes fell to the floor for a few moments, guilt for telling Ellie trickling through him, and then he made a decision.

"Ellie."

She didn't answer. He sighed and walked over to her, standing in the doorway of the room.

"Ellie."

She turned. "Hmm?"

"I think we should go."

"Like, leave?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"The hunters have been comin' too close recently."

Ellie stared at him; there was a resistance in her eyes. "They aren't hunters. They look like people that were left over from what happened in the town."

"They're hunters now. If it's the military then they are here because they're scoutin' the area. To take it back. If it's civilians then they'll be mad. If they find us… if  _any_ of 'em fight us, well… I don't wanna take that chance. And if we get caught in the crossfire, we're dead."

Ellie just stared at him at first, and then she span around, facing the computer again. Her bag was on the table, ready and packed to go. "Fine."

There was something about the way she snapped it that reminded Joel of Sarah – the word  _fine_ in the vocabulary of a young girl (hell, in any woman) never meant that. It meant:  _I'm pissed off with this. You're doing what you want to do, not what I want to do._ It meant:  _Tread lightly._ He wished she had said "okay".

"Tell me when you're ready to leave."

"I'm ready."

"Right. Let's go."

* * *

They left right through the front door and stood on the porch for a long time. Ellie didn't say anything; her eyes were glazed over, absent. Her mind was elsewhere. On Joel's mind was their destination.

"We could head back to Boston," he said, to no answer. Her head didn't even turn towards her. She was leaning over the opposite side of the wooden porch, looking out towards the houses across the street. "Cut through town again. Out past the gates, north until we reach a main road. I know the way to Boston from here."

The silence between them made Joel keep talking, hoping he could say something that would make her talk. "Me and Tommy, after we… after we buried Sarah, we headed that way." He pointed down the street, the way they'd come. "She died on the other side of town, 'bout a mile away from where you and me came in. We found our way to Boston after a long time. Not on purpose."

"Why did you go to Boston?"

 _And she speaks._  Hope went through him. "Tommy. He needed to meet someone." He left out the name; things she didn't need to know. "Took us a while to get there, but we did."

Ellie didn't say anything.

Joel took them back down the street from which they'd come. They took the path Tommy had taken that night, guided by Joel. Down the street and through a winding side-road. A light drizzle began to fall, wetting Joel's hair and the ground beneath them. The dirt began to soak it up, and by the time they reached the end of the dirt road it was wet soggy muck beneath their feet.

It wrapped its way around their shoes, made each step feel heavier. Joel slowed his pace a little; Ellie was too far behind him, but he wouldn't call her out on it.

Down the hill a black building rose from the ground on the right hand side of the road, made of broken wood and ash. Joel recognised it at once.  _Louis' farm_. They'd seen it on that night, alight with fire. Joel and Louis had been good friends once. He'd seen him last a few nights before everything changed, in town. No words were exchanged – a nod from one to the other.

Joel regretted not saying a word.

"Do you feel bad?"

He turned to see Ellie standing, sunk a little further into the mud. Her eyes were redder than he'd noticed before, her arms hanging limp and loose at her sides. There wasn't anger on her face that he could see on her young face; there was some sadness, hurt.

"What d'you mean?"

"How many people did you kill?"

"A lot."

"And Marlene."

He nodded. "And Marlene."

"Do you feel bad for any of it?"

"Ellie, I don't think this is the time –"

"Answer me, Joel."

"Then no. I would do it again."

Her eyes widened a little bit, and he knew she was unsure of what to say. He would be too.

"You shot Marlene –"

"Because she was going to kill you, Ellie! They all were." He rubbed the rainwater from his brow. "I wasn't gonna let 'em. Marlene knew what she was doing was wrong –"

"But  _was_  it wrong, Joel?" Her eyes weren't just red anymore, they were wet. Tears had filled them. They glistened, big and wide. "Think of all the people that would have been save."

"Nobody would have been saved. The doctors were too young, they probably didn't know what they were doing. And if they had got a cure, who would have made it for everyone? A factory? No! They couldn't! And if they  _could_ , who would take the damn thing? The people of this world can't be saved because they don't  _want_ to be saved. The hunters like killin', the government likes the control."

Ellie began to cry hard. "I don't know what to do, Joel. Marlene… You  _killed_ her to save  _me_. I don't deserve it, Joel. All those people that got infected. If  _I_ could have stopped it –"

"You couldn't've stopped it, Ellie. The Fireflies were in over their head. I wasn't gonna let you die. That's not what I want."

"What do you want?"

"I want… I want…" He fumbled for words. "I want you to forgive me."

Joel looked at Ellie, but her eyes wouldn't meet his. They looked off into the right hand side of the dirt road, into the trees. She looked into the trees for a long time. And then her eyes widened with shock. Her mouth opened to shout or scream or speak, and a gunshot boomed out, and blood spurted from her right side.  _No!_

"Shit," Ellie muttered as she collapsed, collapsed into the mud…

* * *

**Don't forget to review!**


	22. Chapter 22

**Author's Note:** Few things to note. First, there's a poll I've posted on my profile for readers of this to have a look at. I'd really like to know what you think. I'll post a new one every week or so, just to see how you're feeling about certain elements of the story. What I would like to ask you is a question of villains this time. So far, you've come across two "big bad" villains. One of them was Frances, the 'priest' of the infected. The second, more recently, was Lydia, the leader of the remnants of the government. Of the two of them, who have you preferred? Both of them were slightly unhinged by the world in a way (I'd argue that the only person in the story thus far is Ellie, who has never known any other world). Let me know in a review. Enjoy the chapter. It took a little while to write because I was unsure how to deal with certain elements, unsure where to actually end this chapter. What I'd also like to know is how you feel about the flashbacks. This will be your second insight into the past of Joel. Remember that the Joel of seven years ago is very different to the one we see now. He's  _far_  more cynical, dark, edgy. You know. So, without any more rambling on my part, enjoy. _  
_

* * *

**JOEL**

* * *

_Stranded in this spooky town, stoplights are swaying_

_and the phone lines are down._

–  **Kings of Leon,** _ **Closer**_  


Outside the rain hadn't stopped since they'd arrived. It flowed down the streets and into the drains. Most of them were clogged, but enough still functioned to stop the streets flooding up completely. It'd been three days since they'd first arrived. Joel peered down the street through the wet window, thick dropping blurring his view. In the distance Joel could see figures lining up outside the ration center.  _You're wasting your time_ , he thought.  _You could have all the ration cards you want, it's not gonna buy you a slice of bread._

Joel reckoned it was likely better on the outside. There was game in the woods to hunt, plenty of life in the rivers and fresh-water flowed freely and plentifully just a few miles south of the quarantine zone. He'd thoroughly mapped the immediate terrain out before they'd arrived, just a precaution, but a necessary one. Joel was a careful man. The less reckless decisions he made in his life, the better. In this world, it only served to make you dig your own grave quicker, and Joel had long-ago swore to never bother even lifting the shovel.

It had been easy enough finding a place to stay. They'd discovered quickly that real estate wasn't a problem. Though the numbers of people in the zone itself ran high, the vast area made it less dense. High populations was a corner many of the now-dead zones had cornered themselves into. Whoever ran this zone, they knew what they were doing.

Out of the corner of Joel's eye he saw a shimmer past the window and recognised it as Tommy at once. He turned around from the window, sitting on the ledge and facing the door. Within a minute or so, Tommy came through the door.

"That rain. It's goddamn freezin' out there."

"You shoulda worn more layers then."

"Yeah, yeah. We get it. You're older than me." He took off his jacket and wrapped it down over the back of the chair by the fire. After that, he sat himself down in the other chair and pulled himself a little closer to the heat.

Joel laughed. "That's true. How's it going out there?"

"People ain't happy, I'll tell you that for nothin'."

"Close to rioting?"

"Maybe. I dunno. Never been good at telling that stuff. But they're louder than they were yesterday, and the day before. Talkin' up more. The guards look pissed. I'm surprised they don't kill the zoners yet."

"They will. Something will go wrong, someone will push someone a little too hard and a bullet will be fired. The zone will bleed. They all do."

"All of them  _so far_. There might be hope for this one yet, Joel."

"We'll just have to wait and see about that. Did everything go all right?"

He nodded. "Yeah. She wants a few shipments. Nothing we shouldn't be able to manage."

Joel nodded. "I've been wondering – you'd think there would be some other arms dealers in the area. Where are they all?"

"They're here, they just ain't doin' so good. We've got more range. Well, I hope we do. We're gonna have to go out and start collecting sometime within the next week. She's gonna start paying, so we better start providing, otherwise we'll have to start hirin' some customer service reps."

They laughed together. "What's she need them for anyway? Just to defend her and her family?"

"I looked into her a little bit, got some info on her and her group. For some reason people still jump at the sight of ration cards, though I dunno why."

"Her group? What are they?"

"Bunch of rebels, I think. Don't know much. I think they're just finding their feet, by the look of the ones I saw."

Joel lifted himself off the window and walked closer to the fire. It was dying, so he broke up some more wood and put it in. Indoor fires weren't against any regulations so long as they didn't spread and were built inside an old disused fireplace. They'd been told by the man that "owned" the building. A nice old guy named Stan.

Since they'd arrived Joel hadn't come across a reason to leave the room, so he'd spent most of his time drinking and waking up groggy the next morning with his head pounding. It was for that reason he'd only seen Stan the once.

Joel shrugged. "I doubt they'll be much of a problem."

"Might even be good for the zone. They don't have half-bad ideas."

An alarm bell went off in Joel's head. Tommy was always the idealist, always hoping the world could be fixed. But it couldn't. He had to protect his little brother from that, from the light.

"They're rebels, Tommy."

"I know what they are, Joel…"

"When they are pushed into a corner they'll start killing and stealing –"

"And is what we do any better? We steal, we kill. We've been raiders, hunters…"

Joel turned, facing Tommy, who was sitting up a little straighter in his chair. "We do it to  _survive._ "

"That's the worst goddamn reason to kill I've ever heard. These people could fight for  _something_. Something bigger than just  _themselves…_ "

"It's about  _them_ , Tommy. There's no greater good here. They're just like everybody –"

"I don't wanna talk about this."

"I'm just sayin' –"

"Drop it, Joel."

He lifted his hands up, acquiescing. "Don't do anythin' stupid, Tommy."

"I said  _stop_ , Joel! Just stop."

Joel sighed deeply and moved back to the window. He took a long gulp from the bottle down the side and felt it trickle down his throat, warm, warm, warm.

)-(-)-(

His hand snapped to his waist for his gun and he pointed it into the bushes. She was on the floor, but he had to make sure they didn't shoot again. A clear mind, that was what he needed. The barrel hovered around where the bullet came from, and then he saw it. Two faces among the trees… one wearing a gas mask – and the other… small, round, short blonde hair… it almost looked like

 _No._ He hesitated, just for a moment, and then it was too late. The face was gone, the child was gone.  _But Ellie is still here_. His head snapped around and he saw her lying in the wet mud, sunk in. The wet mud covered her, she'd rolled as she fell. Her hand twitched at her side over the wound, blood –  _So much blood_ – leaked out of the wound.

"Ellie…"

He ran over to her and slid his arms underneath her back, lifting her. Tears mingled with rain on her face, though she wasn't  _crying_  exactly. Words slurred out of her mouth. Joel couldn't make sense of them.

"You're gonna be okay, baby girl. Come on, we need to get you somewhere safe. Come on."

"O-Ouch… ow… who shot – me?"

"Hush now, baby girl."

She stuttered as Joel started running, trudging through the mud. Towards Louis' farm. He kept looked behind him, worrying, checking for the kid. His mind was racing almost as fast as his feet were. Ellie was so still in his arms, her head gone limp, dropping over the back of his right arm. She bounced up and down as he ran. His legs pounded and ached, every muscle in agony with how far he'd gone.

A fence blocked his path. He slammed his foot into it once; twice; three times. The metal hinges cracked and nails broke off. Two more kicks and the wood splintered and broke off, and then gave way beneath his heavy boots. Joel ran through, towards the house. Underneath him crumbs of glass cracked; the fire would have broken the windows and the winds of the past twenty years blown the shattered remnants about the place.

The door had fallen out of the frame. As Joel trampled over it, the weight of him and Ellie pressed his boots down and the charred wood up, sticking flakes of it to his shoe. Inside the house was a skeletal structure, layered with ash in place of furniture, fuel now devoid of any use. You couldn't set fire to the building if you tried.

Joel rushed into the old dining room and lay Ellie down on the big, wide table. She was still. His facial hair was wet from tears that seemed to come from nowhere. He stroked her face and felt for a pulse; though dim, though faint, it was present. She was alive.  _But only just._

Carefully he pulled back her fleece and lifted her shirt up. In the area of effect the pink of her shirt was deep wet red, with a gaping hole where it entered. Around the rim, her shirt was charred and hard… and when he lifted up her shirt; the bullet was there, an inch into her flesh. There was less blood than he would have thought.

He rubbed his finger around the wound to gauge how deep it went and Ellie moaned.

"Joel?"

"It's gonna be okay, Ellie. I promise."

"Who-…?"

"Just keep still. You're gonna be okay."

"Stop saying that… how bad is – ahh – how bad is it?"

"It's… it's not that bad."

"Joel."

"Don't worry about it."

"I-I don't have much else to do."

"Just lie still."

She began to sniffle, and then soon after she began to cry.  _She's so strong_ , he thought. "Am I gonna die?"

He shook his head hard. "Don't be stupid. You're not gonna die."

"Okay." She was looking at him.

"I have to – I have to get the bullet out."

"It's gonna hurt."

He nodded. "It won't be so bad."

"You're lying – ahh. You're lying again."

"Same shit, different day." He handed Ellie his gun. "Take this. Just in case."

"Where are you going?" She screamed. Loud. It was digging around inside her.

"I have to get somethin' to get it out. I'll be in the house."

"Okay."

"Okay."

* * *

The house was in such chaos it was difficult to find anything. There was no chance of alcohol, though Joel had originally hoped that the wine cellar would have been untouched. When he descended the steps he was full of hope, but then he saw that even the stone steps were black with ash; the wine cellar – which had never been full to begin with, so it hadn't exploded – was empty. Cursing, he made his way back upstairs.

In a blackened kitchen drawer once made of plastic he found an old pair of tweezers, untouched apart from the plastic-rimmed tip. He took it. Next he looked for thread, for fabric and a needle. The wound would need to be sewn up when he was done, but there wasn't exactly stitches around. Long ago he'd had to thread someone's wound. A wound he had caused. He pushed the memory from the past, he didn't need to be thinking about her now.

He found a needle soon enough, in a small cylindrical box, but there was no fabric inside, most of the contents have spilled out onto the floor. From the other room he heard Ellie moaning in pain. The bullet was lucky to have missed everything major… and his mind kept going back to the shooter.

 _It looked like Sarah._ He knew it wasn't in his heart, but it was definitely a child. A child's face was in those woods, he'd seen it for sure, and then it'd run. Fear ran through him, a fear that his mind was breaking further under the stress of the town. When Ellie was fixed, they had to get out of here as quickly as they could. To Boston, to Washington; hell, he'd take Ellie to Britain if he had to.

Back through into the dining room where Ellie was. She was moaning a little louder, trying to lift her back up to see the wound, her hands pulling up her shirt.

"Hey now. Stop that."

"I wanna – holy  _shit_  – I wanna see it."

"Later."

She lay back down and he picked up her back and began to look through it. Usually she would have cracked a joke –  _invading my privacy_  or  _aren't you gonna ask before you do that?_ But nothing. Only pain. He found a trickle of alcohol in a bottle at the bottom of her bag.  _It'll have to do._

Still, there was the problem of sewing up the wound.

"Thread. I need thread…"

"What for?"

"To sew up the damn wound."

Struggling, she tried to lift her back again.

"Hey, stop it."

"No, look…"

She pointed her finger, though it twitched about, to the wound. He looked at for a few moments before he caught on; loose thread from her shirt had come undone. Realising, he carefully pulled it loose. It came free long, taking as much as he could before it snapped off. His hands held it up, letting it fall down, taking a rough measurement.

"Good work, baby girl. This'll be good."

"It's covered in my blood," she pointed out, moans abound.

He laughed a little. "It'll feel right at home."

"How much is this gonna hurt?"

"It won't be too bad."

"Tell me the fucking truth, Joel. I'm not worth less than you.  _Tell me the truth._ "

He stared at a distant window for a few moments, and then he looked her straight in the eyes. "It's gonna hurt pretty bad."

A half-sigh, half-moan. "I know."

He dribbled a little of the alcohol onto a cloth from her backpack. First he wiped the wound, and then the tweezers. It was deeper than he would have liked, but it had to be done. He made sure the thread was threaded through the needle and ready to be used.

"Take a deep breath. Real deep."

"Okay."

"You're gonna be okay. I promise."

"Okay."

"Keep as still as you can. Don't move your sides."

She nodded, biting her lip.

 _Okay_. As carefully as he could, he pushed the tweezers into the wound and twisted them around, feeling for the bullet. Ellie's screams broke his heart, made his stomach knot up. Her head twisted around and her legs banged against the bottom of the table. She screamed and cries and screamed. If he'd have looked then he'd have seen the red of her face, the tears…

 _Come on. Be quick._ The tweezers had to go deeper before metal met metal. He let them spread a little to find the edges and then locked on. Ellie's chest was shaking and shivering. He couldn't see what he was doing… blood had welled up in the wound, filling it up and making seeing impossible. The only thing was to go by what he felt, what he heard, what his gut told him to do.

He felt the tweezers latch onto the rim of the bullet. It didn't seem like the bullet had broken apart inside her or did any damage to bones.

He heard Ellie's screams as he pulled it. He had to pull it ever-so-slowly in case it slid back into the wound and he lost it. He didn't want to cause Ellie more pain. She was still screaming.

Eventually he saw it… the bullet came out with the tips of the tweezers wrapped around it. He threw the tweezers and bullet away and brought the alcohol up.

"This is going to sting," he said, and poured the alcohol over and into the wound. She screamed louder than she had even when the tweezers were inside her, more than when she was shot – she hadn't said much then at all.

He let the alcohol sit and then brushed it out and off, and then he began to sew.

She had stopped screaming as loudly, but every time he slid the needle into her skin and out she flinched. Her eyes were glazed over, staring upwards. He pulled the thread through, and – slowly but surely – the wound began to seal up. It took four or five piercings to completely seal the wound up. A single line of red where the gaping wound had been still existed, criss-crossed over by pink fabric.

He poured the rest of the alcohol over the wound again to be sure, but Ellie barely moved. A quick glance up to her and she was staring at the ceiling, blinking slowly, breathing heavily.

"You okay?"

Nothing.

"Ellie?"

"Yeah?"

"You alright?"

"Yeah. Yeah."

* * *

He didn't leave her side for the next day.

Or the next.

On the third day he had to move them; Ellie's back hurt from the table and half-burned towels did nothing to save it. He carried her very carefully out into the barn, which had been far enough away from the main house to be saved from the fire.

Inside, there was plenty of straw. More than enough to make a bed. Untouched for years and years, it was more or less clean. He shoved it into bags and made a makeshift bed for Ellie to lie on, but she objected to lying, demanding to sit up.

"When do you think we'll be able to move from here?"

"When you can walk again."

"I can walk now."

"When you can walk without bursting your stitches. How do they feel now?"

"Itchy."

Uncertainty rang out, high, loud and clear. "Itchy?"

"Yeah. Itches like fuck."

"Let me see."

She pulled her shirt up a little and Joel saw what he expected, and what he feared. Around the pink threading was red, pocketed with marks. All the colours were wrong, wrong, wrong. A black line had formed along the straight rim of the wound, dried blood, and following out it was purple.

"Shit, it's infected."

"Ah, fuck," Ellie echoed.

"You're goin' to need antibiotics. This won't go away by itself."

"What happens if we can't find them?"

"The same as what would have happened to me if you hadn't found them for me last winter."

"Thanks."

"For what?"

She smiled. "For telling me the truth, about this."

"Never mind about that now. We just need to fix this."

"But how?"

Joel thought hard.

Hospitals were off-limits, pharmacies too. The drugs they'd taken from the shop… there hadn't been any antibiotics there, just painkillers. Besides, they were all back in the fortress. And then… he remembered.

"In that compound there was a medical centre. If I can get in there –"

" _No_  fucking  _way_ ," Ellie said forcefully. "The one filled with smoke and spores? No. We don't even have masks anymore, Joel. You left your stuff and your bag in there."

"I don't think we got a choice, Ellie."

"What about in town? There must be a building or some place with them."

"Naw. It'll all have been looted by raiders and the town a while ago."

She scowled. "I don't want you going in there, Joel."

A long silence, and then, "I know where I can get a gas mask."

"Where?"

"One of… one of the people that shot you. They had one."

"You saw them?"

"Yeah. One looked like a kid. I don't know about the other one, but they were wearing a gas mask."

"Joel, they  _shot_ me. And you want to go running after them for a mask we don't even know works."

He thought for a minute. "That's about the size of it. Yeah."

"I want to go with you."

"You can't walk."

"And you can't go without me."

"You left me to get us food. To get me drugs, when I was hurt."

"And look what fucking happened, Joel! Bad things happen when we aren't together."

"Ellie, I don't wanna argue with you here. If you don't get them, you'll die. I need the mask."

"How long?"

He was confused. "What?"

"How long until I'm dead?"

He paused. Joel, in the past, had plenty of experiences with people become infected – not with the disease, but with normal infections. Ones that just killed you. The ones that made you watch them really die. "A couple of weeks."

"I can walk. It just hurts. I'm coming with you."

"Ellie –"

"If you don't let me come with you, I'll follow you. You can't stop me. I'm able to –"

"Okay."

"What?"

"Okay. You can come. Tomorrow. We leave tomorrow. For now, I want you to sleep. We'll need rest."

She smiled. "Thanks, Joel."

"Sleep. Sun's goin' down."

She laid back on her pillow of straw, though her eyes were still open. Joel toyed long with the idea of waiting until she slept and then slipping out, but he couldn't risk her following him in the dark, injured. If something went wrong then he had to be there. The situation was hell and tore him up inside; twisting feelings of doubt and uncertainty roamed around his chest, making his gut feel uneasy.

His thoughts turned to the shooter. One of them was definitely a child… and the mask. It was the mask they wore in the camp, the type the military had. He remembered it well; rooted in his mind. Sarah's shooter had worn one of them.

There was more to the mask than he liked to admit. It was a symbol for him; a symbol of loss, of misery, of fear. He'd hesitated when he should have shoot them. He should have been more prepared, more ready to kill. Because he would kill, and he did. Often and with no remorse. Nobody would hurt Ellie.

This time, he'd be prepared.

This time, he wouldn't hesitate.

This time, he'd kill.


	23. ELLIE XII

**ELLIE**

Yellow streamed through the windows as Ellie rose, long fingers of light surrounding her mattress bed – a rare thing. The room was small and undecorated, and the bed on the other side of the room was empty. Marlene didn’t sleep late in any case – and usually, neither did Ellie, but the sun held up high in the sky outside told her she had today. _One of those days_ , she thought dreamily, making her way out of the bedroom. The floorboards creaked under her weight as she skipped out of her room and down the hall.

A glint of yellow in the mirror caught her eye. She turned to it and examined herself; for a girl of eight, she was small. Sometimes Marlene called her Skinny – not that she had the choice to be much else, with the food shortages.

Marlene had some friends that came around with extra rations sometimes. Guns hanging from their belts, batons, and metal tags around their necks. They never brought much, but enough to get them through a few days. Especially when the military were keeping food away from them. Those days were the worst.

If Ellie stood on something that doubled her height, she could see people standing in long lines outside the ration center, shouting words like _fuck_ and _shit_. Ellie didn’t swear much, though sometimes the words went all the way up her throat and tickled her tongue, but Marlene didn’t like her swearing much, so she tried not do. Her hand went into her pocket unbidden, feeling for the letter. It was only when she felt the crisp of the old paper against her fingers that she calmed.

In any case, usually she looked out the window every morning to check if she would be having food that morning. Today she didn’t – the house was too quiet, so she knew Marlene had to be here, otherwise she’d be humming and singing to herself. Ellie liked waking up to that.

Further down the hall she slowed her pace at the sound of voices. Whenever there were people in, Marlene made them keep their voices down. _Because she doesn’t want me to know anything_. Sometimes it got on her nerves, being kept in the dark, but Marlene never lied to her straight-up – she just avoided the questions in the first place. That made Ellie almost as mad as the lying – she could always tell when someone was lying to her.

The floor still creaked, but Ellie slowed her pace and quickly it sounded like mice running beneath her feet. Ahead of her was the empty room called the kitchen; that was where they kept the excess rations that Marlene sometimes acquired – and when Ellie said _kept_ , she meant _hid._

She pressed her ear to the door and heard the words, clear and cold. There were two or three voices inside, and it took her a few seconds to make them out. One was definitely Marlene, the others were men – two of them.

“… if you can’t get the shipment then we’ll need to make alternate arrangements,” Marlene said. She sounded angry. Ellie didn’t like when Marlene was angry. “And what I mean by that, is that _you’ll_ have to make alternate arrangements. You gave us your word –”

The other man burst through her words, interrupting. His voice was a southern voice; sometimes they came to Boston from far away. She’d never seen anything outside of the compound – but she hoped to. One day.

“That was before your friend Bobby decided to come here and up the stakes. My brother ‘n me are gonna need some more time before we can get you that kind of firepower.”

The words muffled then and Ellie had to go closer to the door, pressing her ear against it – a little too hard. With no warning, the door gave way – it hadn’t been locked! Ellie tumbled full-bodily into the room, hitting the wooden floor with a dull thud. Slowly, she moved her heads up and saw the eyes all on her.

“Uh, hi.”

“Ellie, when did you wake up?” Marlene asked, coming over to help Ellie to her feet. Without any anger, Ellie shrugged away the help, she could do it herself. Marlene’s eyes were wide with what seemed to be worry, but Ellie figured Marlene just didn’t want Ellie to know what was being said. Her hair fell around her shoulders in thick black curls, framing her dark face.

“Just a minute ago.”

“Ah. Okay.” There was a tense awkward pause and Ellie wished she’d never pressed her ear to the room at all. “Ellie, you know Bobby?” She _did_ know Bobby. He came by every now and again, pretty much always shouting. He was wearing a brown cap on his head, and his nose looked even worse than it had last time – like it’d been broken recently. Short and fat.

“Yeah. Hi Bobby.”

“Hi, little lady,” he said. “Quite a fall there.”

“Mhm.” Her head turned to the other man in the room.

“This is a friend of mine,” Marlene said. Ellie looked at him, unblinkingly, his hair was light brown and tucked behind his ears. “He is –”

“ – just leaving,” the man said, his eyes back at Marlene.

“What?” Marlene’s hands came away from Ellie’s shoulders. “We aren’t finished –”

“No, we are. We can get you – the stuff –” _I’m eight_ , Ellie thought, angry. _I know Marlene wants guns._ “But it’s gonna take us a little longer. You’re gonna have to make your peace with that, you’re the one who’s tried to change the deal, otherwise you’d be getting ‘em when we agreed before. So, whatever the hell you’re planning, change it.”

The man made his way past Ellie and out towards the door. Bobby and Marlene watched him go, and when they heard the front door close, Bobby muttered angrily. Ellie went over to the ragged chair and took a seat. Marlene leaned on the table against the wall at the other side of the room, set deep in thought.

“We’ll have to postpone.”

“Are you fuckin’ _kiddin’_ me, Marlene?” Bobby said, disgruntled. “We just look into other dealers. The two of ‘em have barely been here for a month, and we ain’t seen the other brother.”

“Tommy says he isn’t good with people.”

“Oh, _Tommy_? Are you on a first-name-basis now?  I must’ve missed the part where you two bonded. Marlene, there are other people. What about Robert?”

Marlene laughed. “Robert’s not a thief, not a supplier. He just steals from other people and tries to sell that on. It’s gonna get him killed, and I need someone reliable. Someone that might not have a bullet in their head at the hands of some enforcer by the end of the week. So no, I won’t work with Robert, no matter how god damn desperate I was.”

Ellie toyed with a magazine in her hands, though she wasn’t reading it. Her little ears were taking in every word, though she didn’t recognise the names – Robert, Tommy? The kind of names she’d forget in a few weeks.

There was a long pause. Ellie glanced up and saw Marlene staring into the distance, but Bobby’s eyes were on Marlene, fixed and full with a longing Ellie figured meant that he _liked_ her. Just when Marlene’s eyes fell to Ellie and she was about to speak, maybe even tell Ellie to leave, Bobby cut in.

“You heard about this woman?”

“Yeah. I’ve heard about her. Nothing to be worried about.”

“Should we look into her?”

A pause. “No. She’s too fresh. Too new.” At that, Bobby laughed. “Yeah, I get the irony, but I trust these two.”

“You’ve only met one of ‘em. The other could be a total whacko.”

“They’re about as southern as you, so he probably is,” she laughed. “I dunno. The brother we’ve met – Tommy – I see something in him.”

“A pretty face?”

“It was something he said to me the first time we met. Remember the day? I told you it was only me – in case something went wrong, in case it was a trap. The rain was lashing down heavy and I left the house and through the pretty much empty streets to find him. His brother wasn’t there, obviously. But we talked for a while. I didn’t say what we were doing, but he knew.”

Ellie’s eyes came, unbidden, away from the magazine and up to Marlene.

“Scoot,” Marlene said, pointing at the door. Ellie rolled her eyes and left the room, surely making it clear with the slow walk that she didn’t want to leave. “And close the door!” Ellie did so, fully. She placed her ear against the door.

“It doesn’t matter, but I do trust him. God only knows why.”

“What did he say? When you met him?”

A long gap where nothing was said, so long that Ellie wondered if perhaps Marlene had said and she missed it. But eventually, she spoke.

“He was talking about resistance groups, just in general, and I said this one was different. He agreed. Told me to remember that it wasn’t about us, it was about everyone. Don’t do what’s good for _me_ , do what’s good for everyone. We’re the last of us now, it’s time to start making a proper world again.” She said nothing for a few moments again. Ellie almost left, and then –

“He told me that, when I didn’t know what was right and what was wrong, it was important to look for the light.”

“I’ll give him that,” Bobby said, grunting. “I’ll give him that.”

**)-(-)-(**

It all hurt so much as they walked back to the woods where Ellie was shot, Joel keeping close by her side in case she fell.

Not just the bullet wound, which ached with a hot throb – what stung most was the betrayal.

Ellie thought Marlene loved her like her own mom would have – and she seemed to. There was nothing that ever made Ellie question whether or not Marlene had cared about her, but now it all came crumbling around her.

Silently they marched on.

 “You – uh – you all right?” Joel’s words were stiff and unsure. No matter how much Ellie had been through, she was a teenager and she could sense the uncertainty, like a wolf and blood.

Ellie nodded, maybe two hard, because further down the wound yelped out at her. “Just need to get the meds and I’ll be fine, I guess.”

“Yeah.”

The stretch of road was just ahead of them, splitting a section of old, dying trees in half. Summer’s end was near and the leaves had already taken on a more deathly hue – a faded green instead of a bright, patches of yellow, rough holes. Some of them had blown off the trees and scattered around their feet, walking towards them.

“Just up here,” Joel said.

_I remember_ , Ellie thought. You didn’t forget the place where you were shot quickly, injured badly, almost died. As they walked she wondered if the shooter had intended to kill her. Someone from the fortress saw her leaving the civilians to die. Someone that loved Lydia knew that they were to blame. So many thoughts, questions that she hoped would be resolved. Answers that she feared to get.

When they reached the clearing, Joel walked ahead some, peering into the trees. She could tell where she was shot from, more or less. The sound reached her first, and then the feeling like a punch in the stomach – though she didn’t stagger. She merely looked down and saw the wound in her shirt. The instinct to look disappeared when she sunk into the mud, drifting in and out of consciousness.

“It was there.” Joel’s hand pointed to where he’d seen the face. A dying hedge, but Ellie’s eyes picked up on something else – the way the branches sunk slightly, as though arms had been resting on it.

“Someone had a gun there.”

Joel turned to her. “How d’ya know that?”

“Hunting.”

Joel nodded and looked from left to right, making sure they were safe. When he was satisfied, he moved off. The sound of mud sounded high as he went. Ellie followed him closely, her feet struggling to tread out of the mud that sucked her boots in too quickly. Joel glanced back, making sure she was following.

His hands examined the bushes. “They’re loose,” he said. “You sure ‘bout this, Ellie?”

She rolled her eyes. “Yes, Joel.”

Ellie was tired of Joel trying to make decisions for her. No asking, no talking. In a way, it occurred to her as they pushed past the growth that Joel and Marlene were more alike than she had previously thought. Both Joel and Marlene decided they knew what was in Ellie’s best interest without consulting her. Marlene didn’t want to give Ellie the choice to decide if she would sacrifice herself for humanity, and Joel denied her a voice by lying to her.

What both of them seemed to miss and what hurt Ellie most was that she was ignored and dismissed, she had no say. Both of them minimised her, made her say redundant, so that they could fulfil their own selfish desires. Did Joel want her to survive because he cared about her, or just because he had nothing else? And Marlene – would you give someone you swore to protect, even if it meant possibly saving people?

Ellie looked at Joel’s back as they moved forward into the thick forest, wondering if she trusted him as much as she did months back.

Truth be told, she didn’t.

They kept going.

No birds moved from the trees above them, no rabbits sprung from a burrow. Even in the warm air, they seemed to sense that this would not be a home for them. The heat might even become unbearable when the sun was at its peak; roaring down on them, passing fiery judgement. Maybe she was over-complicating things.

Dead leaves floated around them, falling, but though many seemed to be falling, their overall numbers didn’t deplete. _Just like the bad guys_ , Ellie thought. Joel and her knocked them out, killed them, but they didn’t stop coming at them. Kill or be killed. They didn’t have a choice. Ellie knew that; she’d come to accept it – endure and survive.

“It’s sad that all the people we’ve killed managed to survive everything until that.”

Joel made a confused noise. “Mm?”

“They survived infected, hunters, everything, right up until you or me sneak up behind them and kill them.”

“We don’t really have a choice, Ellie.”

“Yeah, I know. It’s just, like, sad or whatever.”

“Yeah.”

“How many people do you think you’ve killed?”

Joel stopped and turned to face her, though she wasn’t far away from him. Maybe three feet. “What’s this about?”

“I’m just asking.”

“Well – well, don’t ask things like that, Ellie. Just don’t.”

“Do you know?”

His jaw tightened. “No, I don’t. Not anymore.”

“Do you remember their faces?”

“No.”

“Let’s keep going.”

“Yeah. Let’s.”

The sun was spreading orange across the sky above them, setting at last. It had been a long day, but they hadn’t the time to dwindle around and wait for sunrise. If she placed her hand over the wound she could feel the heat it gave out. _Infected_ , she thought. _Oh the irony._

Her eyes swept the ground in front of her, and soon she saw that Joel wasn’t simply stumbling blind through the puddles of browning leaves. There were two trails. She’d learned to spot a trail, back in the winter when Joel was sick. Mostly it was animals, but sometimes she saw a human’s tracks. Not once did Ellie risk following them. The first person she’d seen all winter except Joel and David and his little friend. She shivered at the thought.

The footsteps that trailed through the leaves were small – a child, just like Joel said. They trailed through the leaves with definitive direction. New leaves that had fallen since then, distorting the track just a little, but it always picked itself back up, as though nature had been kind in where they dropped them.

Onwards, the growth became thicker and the day became darker.

* * *

Ellie’s legs ached as though she’d been walking for hours, but it’d only been fifteen or so minutes. She needed desperately to stop and rest, her wound pulsating with a fresh, dull soreness, worse than any sting she’d ever felt. Her side felt numb and cramped, one that she couldn’t flex out of. A few times she’d almost been pressed into asking for a break, even if brief, but no.

They kept going.

“You okay?”

She nodded.

The moonlight was what joined them soon enough, a sliver of it snaking through the blanket of trees above. Winged light danced around Ellie and Joel as they found their way onto a path made of blocks, cleared of any growth. The solid ground was not cushioned like the mud – it felt hard against her legs. Though she yearned for the soft mud, it was no longer an option.

Thickets of thorns and branches had forced them onto the path and the fireflies lit their way. She wondered if their presence made Joel as uneasy as they did to her. So far, all the fireflies had managed in Ellie’s life was lead her into danger.

Without the Fireflies, Tess wouldn’t have died.

Without the Fireflies, Riley wouldn’t have died.

Without the Fireflies, Marlene wouldn’t have died.

_Marlene is dead. Marlene is dead._

It didn’t sink in as she repeated it. _Marlene is dead_ , she thought, _and the man that killed her is in front of me. Walking, trying to save my life._

An invisible hand gripped her throat, choking her a little. She wanted to cry, but she gulped it down, leaving the sadness to bubble and fester in the pit of her stomach, giving her a sort of emotional cramp. All her and Marlene had been through, and it came to _that._

With no warning Joel stopped.

“What is it?”

“Shh.”

He made his way forward slowly, her following. The path, she realised, had come to an end. In the distance the light whirr of firefly wings had been replaced by _voices_. Girls, by the sound of them.

“Do you hear that?”

“Shh.”

He crept forward and Ellie saw his hand moving a little, twitching. Something seemed tense in Joel, more than normal. She didn’t know what, but it wasn’t the time to ask him now. She went to his side and looked as far ahead as she could. A clearing from the trees seemed to exist there, and a great dark shape rose from the earth, pressed against the dark sky. A house, Ellie realised, one made of dark wood. In one of the upper windows red and orange flashed – a fire. No matter how hard she looked, though, she couldn’t see the source of the voices.

Cracking branch behind her, she turned to see – something fell over her face, in front of her mouth. Sharp intake of breath, something in her eyes. Fumes. They watered up and she struggled. _JOEL, HELP!_ she wanted to say, but no words came out.

In front of her Joel turned but hands held white felt over his mouth. Ellie’s hands went numb first, then her feet. Her legs began to shake, though she was only vaguely aware of it.

The hands kept whatever it was pressed hard against her mouth, though she tried to struggle and move and slap at them, her hands were so numb that she struggled to even lift them up. Joel sunk. The pungent, sweet smell filled her mouth more and more. Darkness took her.

Joel and Ellie collapsed to the ground.

* * *

When she woke her head pounded with an ache she’d never experienced before. Her mouth was dry and her legs tingled unpleasantly, like one thousand tiny hot tongues licking at her from under her jeans. Heavy lidded, she couldn’t open her eyes, though there was no light from behind her lids either. Numb arms. She tried to move her fingers and felt them – behind her, against something hard. Wood, she thought, groggily.

A voice from somewhere. “Don’t worry. You’re okay.”

Again, she tried to open her eyes and failed. Her tongue was limp.

“You might feel a bit poor, my little owl. Don’t worry. That’ll pass.”

“Who – who…”

“Shh. Just rest.”

Southern voice like Joel’s, just like Joel’s, enough to make Ellie wonder if it _was_ Joel. She knew it wasn’t, but it just sounded so much like him.

“Fuckin’…”

Dimly she felt a sting on the side of her face; the man had slapped her – hard. The pain spread through the rest of her face.

“I said shut up, you little bitch… Oh, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Here. Take some more.”

It was over her mouth again and she dozed off again, trailing away from the man who had slapped her, wishing she was safe.

* * *

Her thoughts all ran into one another when she woke up again.

_Where am I – have to find Joel – who was that – owls, owls, owls…_

The side of her cheek still stung, though the throb from the wound at her chest had dulled away. She was all numb, but she kept quiet. A light scuttle from the other side of the room, small scarpers of footsteps – it could be a person, it could be a rat. She didn’t open he eyes. She moved from side to side, fidgeting with whatever was binding her hands together.

_Don’t let them know you’re awake. You have the advantage, Ellie. Keep them surprised and you can get out of here and find David – no, find Joel – Tess, Marlene._

She was all mixed up and it frightened her. Her stomach churned with fear and upset.

“Who’s there?” she asked, forgetting all about her vow of silence. She wanted to sleep again, but she was so adamant that she would survive, that she would find Joel. She had to endure.

But what if she didn’t? Would she really care? Ellie felt, at least in some hidden corner of her mind, that maybe she was all spent out – an old force whose time was coming to an end. Maybe it was just groggy thoughts with no coherence, maybe it was her true feelings coming to air for the first time.

Regardless of what she felt inside, her hands still fumbled with whatever was binding her arms behind the chair.

“Who’s there? Fucking answer me!”

Her eyes, with much effort, dragged themselves open into darkness. Right ahead of her a small wooden staircase sat – she was in a basement of some sort. The room was dank and made of stone foundations, but the floor itself seemed to be made of the same dirt – though drier – that they walked through outside.

On the stairs was a small shape. A faded red skirt and a dirty white shirt; her hair was styled in a strange bob but knotted and frayed, and her eyes were angry.

“Who the fuck are you?”

She was around Ellie’s age – maybe younger.

“Let me fucking out of here.”

The girl rose and came a little closer to Ellie, a timid expression on her face. She looked afraid of Ellie, moving with a great and intense fear. Her skin was pale and blotted with black and blue, some of the bruises fresher than others.

“Can you hear me?”

The girl reached her hand out towards Ellie’s face, and Ellie tried to shrink back away from her to no avail. Her legs and arms and body were bound too tightly and though she struggled, there was nothing she could do. Helpless. The little girl’s hand, shaking, came closer and closer, and just when Ellie thought she was going to stroke her cheek, the girl’s hand became a claw and streaked her face, drawing blood and causing Ellie to scream.

“WHAT THE FUCK, GET AWAY FROM ME!” She struggled, moving from side to side, but she feared capsizing and being stuck down there, so she didn’t move too hard.

The girl screamed a little giggle and rushed away, back up the stairs. The door at the top of them parted just a little for her to slide out and the girl was gone.

“LET ME FUCKING OUT OF HERE!!”

She rubbed her restraints against each another, realising that it was rope. _Maybe thin enough to wear away and get loose._ Her wrists came together in a way that would make them touch if it weren’t for the rope. She rubbed and rubbed and rubbed, the feeling slowly returning to her body. She knew she’d been drugged, but not what by. Something sweet that they soaked in that white paper.

_Yes_ , she thought, finding little threads breaking loose from the rope –

And then the door at the top of the stairs clinked with the sound of someone turning a lock and the door opened. A silhouette stood at the top of the stairs, and began to walk down them. He was tall, and as he came more of his features came into focus. Dark hair flecked with grey, and a stubble face that reminded her of Joel’s. His eyes were wide and blue, she could tell even in the dark.

“Hello,” he said, smiling. “What’s your name?”

“None of your goddamn business. Let me go.”

He drew in breath, shaking his head. “Disappointin’, little girl. I want this to go easy. You give me a straight answer now. What d’ya say?”

“I say, go fuck yourself.”

He slapped her so hard the chair moved. “You tell me your goddamn name or I’m gonna rip the hair from your head, you little bitch.”

Ellie gritted her teeth. “Ashley.”

“ _Ashley._ That’s a name, yeah. Not your name. You’re lyin’ to me. That’s okay. Once we know each other better, you’ll tell me the truth. All of you do.”

“Who the fuck are you?”

The man’s face tensed at Ellie’s language, as if it hurt him physically, but he regained his poise quickly enough. “I’m a lot of things. A healer, a saviour, a father.”

“What’s your name? Why are you doing this to me? Where’s my friend?”

His eyes opened a little wider at that, and Ellie didn’t know that was possible. He came closer, latching onto Ellie’s words. “Your friend. Tell me more about him. How do you know him?”

“He’s my father.”

His face darkened. “No, no… no, he’s not. He’s _bad._ A bad man.”

“You know him?”

“I know his _type_. Liars. Evil liars who just want to use you. _I_ care about you. Think of us as _mirrors,_ Ashley. He is the flip-side of me, don’t you see? In any case, all I want is for you to be safe here with all the other girls. They love me, and you’ll come to as well. You can trust me. I’ll leave you here for a little while longer.”

“Why can’t you let me go?”

“Let you _go_? No, that’s a terrible idea, terrible. Don’t be silly. You stay here for a while. Get yourself comfortable. I’ll send someone down with some food for you, some hot food. And some medicine to deal with the nasty scratches on your face, and the bullet wound in your side. I’m going to make this good for you, Ashley. You’re goin’ to love it here. Everyone does, in the end.”

He walked back up the stairs.

“What’s your goddamn name?”

“Jacob,” he said. “You can call me Jacob. Nice to meet you.”

He closed the door and left Ellie alone in the dark, rubbing the rope together. Though the room was dark, there was hope still in her, a light that she could keep alive, but when the door clicked and rattled as it locked, it took a blow. Ellie started to cry.


	24. ELLIE XIII

**ELLIE**

The first day was long and dark and hazy. He only came in once, and that was to force drugs on her. Ellie’s nature did not lend easily to being a passive prisoner, so she gave him hell. When Jacob came close she spat on him and struggled, tried to resist, but it was short-lived. Her eyelids drew themselves heavily over and cut her out from the world, only dimly was she aware of hands touching her skin. Ellie wanted to cry, but her eyes wouldn’t blink to let the tears out. They were trapped, just like her.

The second and third day she couldn’t tell apart – they seemed to mingle together into one hellish period. There was no light or darkness in the cellar, not at all. She tried to stay awake as long as possible, which wasn’t long with the needles he had. He came in twice over those two days – the first made her groggy and tired and sleepy, and the second she barely felt at all. “This’ll make you all better,” he said. _Why was I shot?_ Ellie wanted to ask, but her head dropped down and it was all background noise.

On the fifth day, she heard shouts and screams from outside – all girls but one, a man’s voice. He was probably tormenting the other girls. She didn’t know anything about them until the sixth day.

“They don’t like you very much,” he said, drawing up a small stool to sit in front of her. “They got a little upset when I told ‘em that you’d be stayin’ with us for a while, but a slap across the face did them good. They’re good girls… misguided though they may be. Bad blood.”

“Where’s – where’s Joel?”

Slap. Slap. Slap. Her nose started to bleed. “Don’t you dare mention that filthy piece of trash under my roof!”

Back up the stairs and slammed the door, blocking out the light again. She yearned to see the sun.

Her arms ached so badly, cramping up along her muscles. She needed to move them, but they’d been stuck behind her for so long. How many days had it been now? It had to be a week. Maybe two. She had to get out of here and find Joel, if he was still alive. They might have killed him. Jacob didn’t like Joel, but anytime Ellie brought him up… her face recoiled a little at the thought. _Please let me out of here. Please, please, fucking please._

The days weren’t as long as Ellie thought. Two weeks was really ten days. Still, it was long and hard. On day ten Jacob came in and Ellie felt guilty… and relieved. When he came, the light broke its way into the room and the rats darted away from her feet. In the dark she could hear them whispering and squeaking, feel them brushing against her bound legs and feet.

Things in the dark didn’t frighten Ellie, no; but this place had changed her. No, it was _changing_ her. That scared the god damn shit out of her.

“Hello, my little owl. You look pretty in that light. Pretty and pale. I wish all my girls looked like you.”

She wondered if she could kick him and considered spitting on him when he came closer, but that would just make him go away. It would make the light go away. Ellie said nothing.

“I have more medicine for you,” he said.

“Will it knock me out?”

Jacob shook his head. “No. Not this one. It’s for the wound. Lucky the bullet didn’t hit anything important, hmm? Otherwise you’d be dead and we would never have met.”

Ellie found some strength in her voice, hoping that she wouldn’t regret speaking. She hadn’t replied this much to him since they first spoke. “Why did you have me shot?”

“Me? Have you shot? I think you’ve gone cooky, Ashley. I didn’t do that. Who shot you – who? Tell me.”

She wanted to say, _One of those little bitches shot me_ , but she had more restraint than that. Ellie said, “One of the girls.”

Jacob’s face darkened; she couldn’t tell if he knew she was shot or if this was new information, but he hadn’t asked initially about the wound. “One of my girls,” he repeated, quietly.

“Yeah. One of them. Shot me as we were walking away from you.”

“What – what did she look like?” he asked, teeth gritted and jaw clenched.

“I don’t know. I didn’t see her. And anyway, she had a damn mask on.”

Realisation. Jacob’s nostrils flared and he left the room.

_No, please don’t leave me in the dark. Please keep the door open. I need the light._

Ellie rubbed her arms together as Jacob flew up the stairs. Loose threads protruded from some parts of the rope but not many. She could feel the heat around him leave the room, and she shuddered at the thought of being in darkness. But just when it was meant to happen, just when the dark was meant to fall and she was meant to be alone, the door did not close. Jacob flew past the door, forgetting, other things on his mind. His footsteps thundered heavily above her like never before. His voice boomed out too, calling a name. _Sparrow._

“ _SPARROW, YOU LITTLE BITCH. GET OUT HERE.”_

High screams, the screams of young girls that pierced Ellie’s ears and found guilt. She would cry for those girls that night as Jacob beat her for hours. Maybe worse, Ellie couldn’t be sure. A part of her didn’t want to be sure. All she knew was that the girl was going through hell – was it Ellie’s fault? Again, a part of her said _No, she shot me, she tried to kill me. She deserves it._

But that was shallow of Ellie, and guilt rippled through her with each subsequence scream. She tried to focus her thoughts elsewhere, on something that wasn’t so close and so loud. _Joel._ Ellie wondered where he was and tried to hold onto that thought, but it slipped away from her. _Would Joel feel guilty about this?_

No, she decided. He wouldn’t.

Ellie closed her eyes tightly and tried to slip away from the world, but it didn’t work, and she was forced to listen to Jacob slap the girl across the floor as she whimpered like a kicked dog.

* * *

How long has it been?

I don’t know anymore.

Her eyes fell to where someone had ripped the fabric of her shirt to remove the bullet and saw that the rim was closing. She’d watched it progressively grow smaller and smaller, fed antibiotics by him. He was trying to save her, of course. He told her so every time they saw one another. The Man who opened the door, the light bringer. Jacob.

I’ll keep you safe, Ashley.

You promise?

I promise.

She wanted to run her fingers along the rim of the wound. Impossible – they were still bound to the chair. Ellie still hadn’t moved. Jacob couldn’t let her move, not now. Maybe it was because he was afraid of her. He had every right to be; Ellie had told him about David. There was no going back then.

Footsteps from above – light, slow. It was not him. One of the girls, she reckoned, but it didn’t concern her. Jacob had forbidden all of them from going near the stairs, and with good reason. One of them had tried to _kill_ her. The rest might try to if they came close. So, naturally, when the door at the top of the stairs parted from the frame, she was horrified. No light seeped into the room – full dark, not even the moonlight. Still, she could make out the girl’s shape. She might even have been the one that shot her. The girl came closer.

“If I come down to you, will you shout? Will you wake him up?”

Ellie stared thoughtfully at the girl for a few moments. “No.”

The girl kept coming down until he reached the bottom chair, where she sat, maybe four or five feet between them.

“I’m sorry I shot you.”

“Why the fuck did you shoot me?”

She hesitated. “To make you run away. I was aiming for your arm. I’ve never fired a gun before. I’m sorry.”

“We wouldn’t have come here if it wasn’t for you. I wouldn’t have been fucking _shot._ It got infected. I almost died.”

The girl’s head dropped, unable to meet her eyes even in the dark. “Sorry,” she mumbled. Faintly, Ellie detected the faint scent of flowers. She must have brought them in if she’d been out.

Ellie’s temper was rising, but she knew the importance of keeping cool. She remembered the girl’s voice screaming for mercy, slammed by Jacob’s fists. If it were a little brighter, Ellie might be able to see the bruises, gleaming black and blue and purple. Ellie didn’t want that to happen to her again.

 _Jacob is a fucking monster_ , a part of her whispered. _Shut up, Ellie. Shut up or he’ll hear you._

“What’s your name?”

The girl’s head came up. “Sparrow.”

Jacob had a name for Ellie too – one just like that. Owl. Once or twice she heard his voice call for a Starling. “Not that – what’s your real name?”

She shrugged. “That is my name.”

“Why are you down here?”

The girl whimpered. “Why are you down here?”

“The – the other birds said I had to say sorry. It’s my fault you’re down here. And that man –”

 _Joel_.

His name rung in her head like a toll bell, her heart pounding so hard against her chest, hard enough that she could feel her ribs shaking with force. _He’s still alive_ , she realised. _Oh god he’s still alive._ Ellie started to cry; she wanted to see him again, was filled with a great longing to be on the open road with him again. Anywhere. A place where the sun was high and hot and made her clothes stick to her; a place where it was low and cold, serving only as a shadow behind pale blue clouds. _Anywhere._

“The man, where is he?”

“He’s – he’s… I’m not sure. Maybe in one of the other basements.”

“Others?”

The girl nodded. “I have to go.”

“No, please, please don’t go – please!”

But Ellie’s voice was too loud; Sparrow’s eyes widened in the dark, like two giant blue orbs. They were afraid of the power Ellie’s voice had – the ability to summon Jacob from his chamber, the ability to make him choke the life from this little girl. Already she was so sorry; she just didn’t want to be alone down here anymore. She wanted to be outside with Joel again. She wanted Jacob to bring the light.

The little girl came to silent life and retreated up the stairs, and Ellie didn’t say a word. Let her go. Maybe she’ll come back. It was doubtful, but Ellie could hope.

Ellie was good at that.

* * *

No sleeping that night. Her wrists rubbed the rope until the loose threads picked into her skin until she bled. When that happened, she stopped for a while. She didn’t want to risk it getting infected; Jacob would find out and he might take her hands. If that happened, she wouldn’t escape. Trapped forever.

“I hope you’re sticking in there, Joel,” she said to the empty room. “What do you mean you’re worse off than me? He’s calling me _Owl_.”

The night dragged on for hours. _I’ve been here for too long. I need to get out._

Only now did Ellie begin to question how long she’d truly been here. Days had come and gone; sometimes he’d brought light when the door opened, other times he hadn’t. Ellie became so focused on the light when it came, spreading warmth on her cheeks, that she forgot all the times before. In that moment, all that existed was her and the light – and the man that brought it to her. Slowly she was coming to realise that she had to get out, or she would die here. If Joel was alive, finding him was her priority. Jacob considered her a threat enough to be in ropes, so he’d be in chains.

 He came with the light an hour with, glass of water in hand. The light that flooded into the room showed Ellie his smile – too hard to be real.

“Hey there, little darlin’. How are you doin’ today? Did you sleep good?”

“Yeah.”

“Is there somethin’ wrong?”

 _I can’t let him see anything different._ “No,” she replied brightly, smiling. “Nothing wrong.” _Dickhead._

“Good, good.”

At the stairs’ midpoint, Jacob stopped, looking around. He took a deep breath and muttered something under his breath. His eyes bore into Ellie’s skull, the smile disappearing quickly. His temper was prone to quick-fire changes.

It was Jacob’s nostrils that were flaring, however; not his temper. He took a long, deep breath in through his nose.

“You know somethin’? I’m good to my girls when they tell me the truth.” He finished walking down the stairs and stood in front of her. Malice on his face he emptied the glass of water onto her face. A quick smash against the wall and he brought a pointed shard up to Ellie’s neck. “I know you been lyin’ to me, you little whore. Either you tell me what she was doing down here or I’m gonna slit your fuckin’ throat.”

Ellie shook, scared. “She wanted – to say sorry…”

“Oh, did she now? That’s mighty kind of her.”

He slid the shard across the side of Ellie’s face and she let it out a horrible scream. Blood spilled out of the slit. It was agony. He did it again on her other cheek; the tears mingled with blood and found their way into her mouth, salted blood. She tried to purse her lips but he force them open and placed the shard inside, against the side of her lips.

 _Please don’t please_ she wanted to say, but if she moved her lips then they’d get cut.

“I oughtta take your fucking tongue out. Maybe I will. Some day. Not now.” With no care the glass came out and Jacob looked around her face. His eyes examined her nose, her lips, her bloodied cheeks. “Where did you get that little scar on your eyebrow?”

Crying too hard to say anything back, so he continued the conversation himself.

“It’s mighty pretty. Give’s you a sort of wild, rugged look, hmm? Heh.” The shard lifted away the hair spread across her other eye; she stared back at him with hate but he paid no notice. He stuck the shard into her eyebrow and she screamed higher and louder than ever before.

“Okay, okay, I’m done. I promise. Now to go deal with that other little bitch. I’ve got her scent, you see. I give them all perfume because I am _kind_ , and they go and betray me. Fuckers, all of them.”

He through the glass shard against a nearby wall and it split with a hundred high cracks, leaving Ellie again, but this time it was different.

Jacob left Ellie bloodied and crying and sore; no food, no water. Alone again.

At the top of the stairs he turned to her. “Well, that was a lot of fun. Probably more fun for me, you’re being awfully quiet. You lie to me again and I’ll take your arm and leave you with a fucking stump.”

He slammed the door shut and left Ellie alone in the dark.

Only then did Ellie realise the truth: she had to get out of here. Jacob was not the one who brought the light, and he never would be. He was an evil bastard, just another David that wants to take advantage of everyone. When the world smokes with the fires of ruin, why is it always the bastards that survive? Why not Sarah, why not Tess?

_Because good people die when the world goes to hell. Good people die and dark people come out to play._

It’s what the world does to you. It was all Ellie would ever know.

Jacob did not bring Ellie the light.

Jacob took it from her.


	25. JOEL XII

**JOEL**

“Listen, if it were up to me, I’d let you through, but it isn’t – and death by firing squad is on my to-do list for today. The only thing on my to-do list is to stop people moving into section B. It’s on lockdown.”

Joel’s lips tightened at the edges. “And why’s it on lockdown?”

“I dunno.” The guard shrugged, gun in hand. Joel’s eyes lingered on it. “Don’t do anything stupid. Just go back to your buildings and stay there for a while. They’ll lift the lockdown eventually.”

A hand grasped at Joel’s shoulder, clamped enough to hold him back. Tommy was looking at him, eyes full of an unspoken plea to keep calm. But Joel knew he would keep calm – he didn’t feel like being locked away. He took a long, deep breath. On the other side of the fence he could see the street he needed to take, the road he needed to turn at to reach his destination, where the other smugglers were waiting for him.

They’ll need to wait a little longer, he thought and turned away from the guard, walking with considerable pace. Tommy’s footsteps jogged up behind him.

“What’ll we do?”

“We find another way through.”

“Are you kiddin’ me, Joel? We’ll get shot. That’s not how I wanna go.”

Joel peered down the next street along. The fence ran parallel to the backs of the buildings, barbed at the top and wrought tightly with rusted iron from the tip downwards.

“How do you wanna go?”

He shrugged. “I’ll settle for old age. When was the last time you heard of someone dyin’ of old age?”

“Long time. This way.”

They made off down a side road. Joel glanced up at the street name but it’d been scratched off, only steely silver and raw paint left. The roads themselves were cluttered with bare stalls. Most people were clearing away there things or gone already – poured back into their buildings, hiding. It’d been ten minutes since they’d heard the sirens on their way to the checkpoint, Joel cursed loudly.

“If there’s a shutdown on this side, there’ll be one on the other side. They might not even be there.”

“They’ll be there.”

“I don’t trust them. Neither do the others.”

Joel’s head tilted upwards, looking at the buildings. Some riser higher than others, but they were all just different shades of grey. At the tips of them, the gutters were blocked with old, trapped ash. He pointed at one just a little further down and pushed his way in, through the thick wooden doors.

Inside people sat around tables, playing cards. Joel hadn’t played for a long time. Now ain’t exactly the time.

They made their way up stairs in silence. There was a young girl reading on one of the middle sections, hair tied up, but they paid her no mind and she them. It was unusual to see young people, both in Boston quarantine zone and outside. Most of them, Joel figured, probably met similar fates to Sarah. And that angered him – to think as many people lost children.

It was rare Joel saw infected children, however. For that he was thankful.

“Joel, are you sure –”

“They’ll be there.”

“The others said –”

“I know what they said, Tommy. I was there.” Joel turned on his brother, temper flaring up. “And I don’t trust a god damn word that comes out of that woman’s mouth.”

“We can trust Marlene.”

“No. I don’t think we can.” Joel shook his head as Tommy looked on, eyes wide in disbelief. “These people – Fireflies.  They ain’t got somethin’ worth fighting for. Not now, not ever.”

“You don’t think rights and freedom is worth fighting for?” Tommy’s voice was rising in volume now, though it shouldn’t pose a problem. Joel checked the room, finding it empty. “Because it is, Joel. Just because you don’t see the point in somethin’ don’t make it inherently useless!”

“You’re not as smart as you think you are, Tommy,” Joel said, turning away. He looked out the window. In the distance the sun was sinking beneath the empty horizon line. If the window had been on the other side, he’d be able to see the broken down wreckage that was the city of Boston some time long ago.

On the journey across the United States Joel and Tommy had seen their share of broken cities, populated by the damned and the infected. Both of them equally willing and happy to kill. The city of Little Rock had been the worst. It had been Tommy’s idea to go through the city, thinking it small enough to be all but destroyed. They were surprised at the result.

The town itself was largely untouched; no more than expected, minor differences – cars strewn around the streets, doors lying open.

“You think there’s anyone in here at all?” Tommy had asked then, looking around. Both of them had their guns at the ready.

Joel aimed down the scope of his hunting rifle, line of sight straight all the way down the street. It seemed to go on forever, he could see blue sky and whiffs of cloud in the distance.  “Not sure. Maybe. Don’t put down your gun.”

Tommy choked a laugh. “Why the hell would I put down my gun?”

“I dunno. Seems like something you would do.”

Tommy’s hands fell to his side. “Are you gonna keep bringing that up?”

“Probably.”

Grunts from somewhere; muted, dimmed, but grunts all the same. “Did you hear that?” Tommy’s gun came up again, the barrel pivoting with his body in a full three-sixty turn.

“Yeah. Over there.”

Both of them trained their sights on a department store entrance. The doors were blocked over with nailed-up wood, and over that was a car. “Whatever’s in there, they don’t want it getting out.”

Joel nodded. “Don’t think there’s much doubt about what’s in there, Tommy.”

“Yeah. I guess. Not sure why I said that. It’s always zombies.”

Scoff.

“Something funny?”

“Just never heard you say the word before.”

Their barrels were on the doors, which were moving now ever so slowly, but they kept backing off. It would be stupid to go any closer, and Joel wasn’t stupid. “It felt right. Weird that we never use it. The Z-word.”

“We don’t use it because zombies are something that happens in films and games and stories. This ain’t a film or a game.”

“You got a problem with the word zombie?”

Joel shrugged slightly, enough for Tommy to see. “I don’t have a problem with the word, I just got a problem with the things. So long as they don’t come at us.”

A smash rang out across the empty streets, loud and sudden. Glass clattered and splashed out of a side window, and out tumbled infected. Joel and Tommy began to run. “You had to say it.”

Joel looked out of the window, seeing the ruined skape of Boston again. He turned back to his brother, who was standing closer to him. “What’s your problem with them, Joel? Really. Tell me the damn truth.”

Joel bit his bottom lip before he replied; they’d had the discussion a thousand times before. _It’s strictly business,_ Tommy had promised him, but Joel could feel his brother slipping away from him.  “My problem with them is that they ain’t good people. Now, when things are going good, yeah, fine, but just you wait. When shots are fired and people bleed, there won’t be no hope left for them. There won’t be any light. There will be bodies. Dead terrorists strewn through the damn streets. I don’t want my brother being one of them.”

A long silence. Joel and Tommy stared at each another for what seemed like forever. With no more to say, he turned away from his younger brother and pulled up the window. It was high, but there were ledges for him to drop onto. A quick check to make sure there was no guards on the street around them, and he vaulted out onto the ledge. Unfortunately, it collapsed underneath him and he fell.

The landing was hard on Joel’s feet, though his boots took the brunt of the shock. Tommy landed beside him quietly, the sound of keys ringing lightly from his pockets. His hand went there at once, killing the sound at once.

The thicket of branches and leaves they’d landed behind did as Joel suspected, hiding them from view. All they had to do now was merge with the stalls on the other side of what a signpost whispered was once named Church Row. Joel’s eyes traced the main road of the street and found a side alley.

“There,” he said, pointing. “That side road. If we go down there we'll find them.”

“That a guess?”

“Pretty much.”

Tommy laughed. “Figured as much. What if the road's a dead-end?”

“We'll double back and take the next alley."

"That's a hell of a risk. If those guards posted down there come up...”

Tommy left the rest unsaid, but Joel didn't more context. He rose a little and looked over the bushes, head turned right. He couldn't see the guards this far in, there was a thick wall of concrete between them. If they did happen to come down the street and see Joel and Tommy, they would take them in, like they did more and more often now.

The smiles the guards gave out were uncommon when Joel and Tommy arrived in Boston, but they'd gotten worse. Something was changing them, slowly, over the six months, and Joel suspected it was Tommy's terrorist buddies, the Fireflies. Better not mention it again, he reckoned. This would not be the ideal time to start an argument.

Crouched, Joel made his way down beside the bushes. They ran close to the fence and all Joel could think was of how glad he was there were no thorns. Leaves and vines snared his legs up and he had to pull himself free. Tommy was faring better.

“I bet you envy me those ranger classes now?" Tommy kept his voice low.

Joel scoffed, loud enough for Tommy to hear. "Getting up five in the morning to walk through a forest ain't my idea of fun.”

"What was?"

"I'll let you know when I find out."

He peered down the path of nestled leaves and saw that, largely, it had been trampled before. Whoever had walked this path last, they'd probably been scraped half to hell just by the branches alone, no thorns required. A small parting in the bushes further ahead told Joel where the person had pushed through.

“In there.”

Branches and rough leaves that looked like fingers rubbed against Joel's face, on in his eye. He kept the pace slow, in spite of it all. If he stumbled and fell out and a guard saw him, he didn't want to risk them hurting him or, more importantly, Tommy. When faced with his own and his brother's mortality, he worried more about his brother's. Every time.

"Can we go in faster? I'm gonna lose an eye back here.”

"Better an eye from the bush than a hand from a machete,” Joel whispered. "Not risking being caught by some guard we didn't see.”

Tommy choked a little. "God damn it, they're goin' in my mouth. What kind of bushes keep their leaves in fall?”

Joel crouched down ever further,with the hedge reducing in size it was only slightly bigger than his crouched stance. Just ahead he could see the gravel from the street. _Almost there._

His head went ahead of the rest of him, eyes set on the street around them. The path to the smaller was clear, but he couldn't be sure the guards wouldn't see them if they ran, and the angle prevented him from seeing further down the alley. _I can't tell if it's a dead-end._

"Joel, if this area is shut down, why ain't it crawlin' with guards?"

"Not sure."

"Maybe Robert got himself caught. And the rest of 'em."

His neck ached already. _You aren't as young as you think you are, Joel. You've maybe got five years left of this business before you fall out a damn window and break a hip._

"Robert's a paranoid wreck. If something smelled wrong, he'd run."

"You don't think a shutdown qualifies? The guy could be back in his damn building, hiding his weapon stash beneath the floorboards."

"It's too late to go back now. We keep goin', even just on the off-chance someone's there."

“Fine.”

A final sweep across the open street with his eyes and then he dove out of the bushes and sprinted, keeping lookout over his shoulder. The guards were faced the opposite way, and Joel signalled to Tommy. He heard his footsteps quickly enough, following him behind. As they thought, the alleyway went all the way down, stretching out in some kind of yard. They began to walk down, keeping quiet and close to the walls.

“Well, we made it,” Tommy said.

“Yeah.”

“You don’t have to sound so happy about it.”

“Hm.”

The alley took them down into a clearing. The yard was empty but for loose tires suspended from wooden beams, swinging in the wind. Joel thought of a similar set-up they had back in Texas. He still remembered every bit of that house, even though he thought he’d forgotten it long ago. The tyre swing. The note on the fridge. _Disconnect, Joel, or it’ll get you killed._ He tried to dodge the thoughts but the image of Sarah swinging on her tyre-swing was stubborn. He could still see her there, and he could still see her dying in his arms, burned onto his mind like a visceral tattoo.

Tommy’s hands gripped his hips at the derelict yard.  “Empty. Like I said.”

Joel said nothing and simply walked further in. Tyres piled up beside cars with rust for paint, stripped for parts. Empty buckets full to burst with brown, muddied water, paintbrushes sticking out of their depths. Fences were up around the sides, pointed with barbs at the top, and an old garage that was where Robert should have been standing – but he wasn’t. No one was.

Or were they?

“Someone’s here,” Joel said.

A crack made Joel’s head snap around, but it was too late and the fist took him fully in the face. He staggered back a little, and moved out of the way of the foot coming at him. He punched the other person in the stomach, feeling their ribs with the force. Dimly he was aware of Tommy looking for some form of weapon in the background. A fist came at him again, but this one he caught.

Their legs swept him up, making him fall, but he managed to land his feet on their chest and flip them over his back. When Joel got to his feet again, with a bloodied nose and aching back, they were blocked by Tommy, hand around his throat.

“Let him go.”

“Who are you?” said a woman’s voice, deep. He couldn’t yet see her face, but she was wearing tight-fitting jeans, deep blue.

“I said let him go!”

“I’m the one with his throat. Tell me who you fucking are.”

Joel gritted his teeth. “Where the hell is Robert?”

“He left when they declared lockdown.”

“Are you with him?” The woman didn’t reply. “DO YOU WORK FOR HIM?”

“Yeah.”

“Let him go.”

A silence passed between them and she pushed Tommy away; he could see her face. Her hair was dark and fell around her face, framing it like a curtain around window. Her nose was short and straight, her lips thin. She was young, thirty or a little older. Grey was creeping into her hair at the roots, though she seemed to have no problem with that. These days, age was a sign of perseverance, if anything. _I wonder if I’ll live to see fifty._

Joel walked towards the woman as Tommy backed away. He stood with his back to a crate, no doubt feeling with a hidden hand for a weapon to smash over the woman’s head. Tommy could hold a grudge, and no doubt he would.

“You gonna explain to us why the hell you tried to kill us?”

She rolled her eyes. “Probably not.”

“Cut the crap, lady. Who are you?”

“I work with Robert,” she said, but there was undeniable attitude to her voice, like she was disgusted by the words that came out her mouth. _I’d be disgusted if I worked with a rat like him._

“And Robert asked you to attack us?”

“No, it was a misunderstanding. I’m sorry. Robert wants to do business with you, it’s only become a bit difficult right now. There are other things going on, stuff he needs to deal with. When the skies clear he’ll deal with you.”

“Listen, lady, whoever you are –”

“My name’s Tess.”

“Yeah, whatever – listen, we don’t got time to wait. We need what we said he could get. If he won’t come through, my brother and me will go speak to him personally. We’ll deal with him.”

The woman sighed. “Robert needs to wipe his mouth, though, because he’s talking shit. He doesn’t have the guns – they were taken.”

It was Tommy that came forward before his brother this time, his temper flaring, as it often did when it came to _them_. Joel’s anger stemmed from a loss of business – but Tommy’s was more personal than that. “What do you mean they were fucking taken? Taken by who?”

“FEDRA. The guards intercepted them.”

Tommy began to splutter and curse but Joel raised a hand to quieten him. “And Robert gave them the shipment to save his own sorry ass.”

Tess nodded. “The man’s a piece of shit, but he didn’t have much of a choice. I’d have done the same thing. The guards are getting more violent in this place, something is making them worse.”

As little as he wanted to admit it, Joel was the same. If it came to giving over a shipment of guns for freedom, he’d have no problem with selling the weapons out. A one-way ticket to a cell was something Joel would avoid at all costs. Tommy, however, didn’t seem to understand that. Blind rage.

“I’ll put a god damn bullet in the man’s head if he wants to double-cross us –”

“Calm down here, trigger-man,” the woman said. “Like I said, he’s useless, but nobody needs any bullets in their heads. That may be how you do things in the deep south, but up here we do it differently.”

“The woman’s right. Robert ain’t the problem anymore, Tommy. It’s getting the guns.”

Tommy came up and stood between Tess and Joel, the three of them forming a triangle together. He looked appalled. “Joel, the damn _guards_ have them. There’s no way in hell we can get them. We pay Robert a business, try and talk him into –”

“He’ll just run and hide from us, Tommy. You’re right, we need the shipment, but we ain’t gonna get a replacement. We’re going to get what we came here for.” Thoughts crept through his mind, a plot forming slowly. He looked straight at the woman. “And you’re gonna help us get it, lady.”

She smiled a little. “And why would I do that?”

“Because you hate that bastard just as much as I do, and you’re in the market for a new job. You help us, we’ll cut you in.” He paused and looked the woman up and down. She held herself in a fight against him and could have ended it by running something sharp across Tommy’s throat. “As an enforcer.”

“I’m not interested.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Well colour-me-disappointed, I don’t give a rat’s ass.”

Joel nodded. “But you’ll help us?”

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Joel,” Tommy said, beating in. His eyes were on the woman – _Tess._ He didn’t trust her as far as he could throw her, and Tommy had the upper-body strength of a new-born calf.

“We can’t do it without her. Three people, not two. I need someone else that can _handle_ themselves.”

Tommy scoffed, insulted. Maybe Joel had crossed a line there, but he had to be honest to get him to agree. If it came to fighting, then Joel had to be able to help Tommy. His brother was good at talking to people, good at making bonds and brokering deals, but he was no fighter. All this time in the waste land of America, and he still wasn’t a fighter.

“You in?” Joel asked.

The woman was silent for some time. Behind her the tyre swing stirred slowly, the beam above it creaking deeply, a low and sombre cry. One of the buckets had spilled in their fight and soaked deep into the deep grey gravel below, staining it a murky brown.

“All right, Texas. I’m in.”

Joel and Tess shook hands and Tommy walked off, back down the alley.

)-(-)-(

“You fucking disgust me,” the man said and drove his elbow into Joel’s face, hard. “You piece – of – SHIT!” Each word was punctuated by a slap from the back of his hand. “You’ve polluted my poor little girl. Oh, I’m gonna make you suffer for what you’ve did to Ashley. I’m gonna make you suffer.”

He slammed hard elbow bone into Joel’s face until his nose burst fully and bloody flooded out, running down the sides of his face. His head went back, banging itself against the hard steel table that the man had bound him to. His eyes were full of hate as he gripped a fistful of Joel’s hair and tugged at it.

“Ashley deserves better than you.”

A final slam across into the table that made Joel’s head ache and bleed. His face was patched and bruised, his arms just masses of flesh that held open wounds leaking blood. Every now and again the man brought him water, just so he could keep him alive, and the only reason Joel drank it was because he knew he had to get out of here. He had to find Ellie.

When the man closed the door and sealed out the light, Joel sat in the dark and listened to the trickles of running water. A pipe, burst for a long time, let the water drip into a small puddle that existed at the same size forever. It dripped – every second – on and on, giving Joel something to focus on.

On and on. It would not stop for anyone, least of all Joel. He just had to keep waiting, waiting for something to change. The sores on his back itched at him, burning a fever hot. His mouth swirled, no more saliva, only a thick whirlpool of phlegm that felt like foam. The man had beaten his legs too. Joel wasn’t sure if he could walk.

How many days have I been in here?

Too many.

Where’s Ellie?

Your guess is as good as mine.

Who are you?

I’m nobody. I’m in your head. Go to sleep for a while.

* * *

He dreamed of the first time they met, more or less.

“Who the fuck are you?”

“My name don’t matter to you. What matters to me is that you tell me why you were trespassing on my property.” The man came closer to Joel but there was little to see from the table.

“I’m sorry, I am. We needed help for my – daughter.”

“Oh, your daughter is she?”

“Yeah. Where is she?”

“She’s safe.”

“If you touch her I swear to god –”

“There’s no need for foul language in here. This here is a house of truth. She’s being cared for, I assure you. I’ve got some daughters of my own. They’re making her feel at home. She hasn’t asked about you, though. I’m sure she will, maybe.”

“She has a _bullet wound_ that _you_ –”

“Are healing. We’re takin’ good care of her, I promise.”

Joel felt a little calmer knowing that she was being taken care for, but he couldn’t trust a word that came out of his mouth. Something in his face reminded Joel of Frances, that crazy bastard. He pushed that thought from his mind, not wanting to think of him, of Tommy…

“Then why have you tied me up?”

“We have to be sure that you’re who you say you are, you see. It’s not that we don’t trust you, it’s just that – well, to be honest with you, it _is_ because we don’t trust you. Tell me, what’s your name?”

“Troy,” Joel said at once, then regretted it. Ellie might think Joel was going by his brother’s name. “But you can call me Tommy. Nobody ever called me that except my dad.”

“Tommy,” the man repeated, as if turning it over in his mind. He couldn’t see the man clearly, but Joel knew a clenched jaw when he saw one, and this man was angry. Ellie must have told him his real name, but there was no going back now. _And he’s lying to me. He wants me to try and turn against Ellie, or me against her._

“Why don’t you let me out of here and we can have a talk?” _And I’ll snap your neck._

The man’s tongue licked across his teeth. “No, I don’t think that’d be a good idea.”

“Let me out of here. I’m gonna give you one last chance.”

The man came closer to Joel, hovering just a few inches away from his face. Their eyes bored into one another’s, searching for something, humanity, perhaps. Neither found what they were looking for. “You don’t give me last chances here, _Joel._ You’re the one that’s strapped and bound to a table, and if you don’t behave, you’ll die on that slab. You understand me?”

“Go to hell.”

The man slapped Joel across the face, hard enough for Joel to go silent. _Why do I always get the damn unstable bastards of the world?_

_Because the world churns them out like dirt these days. They’re the currency of this world. They keep it going ‘round._

“You gonna be a good boy now?”

Joel said nothing.

“If you don’t beg for me to not kill you, I am gonna cut off your feet.”

Joel stayed strong for some time, holding himself up against the maniac’s threats. It wasn’t until sometime later, when the man came in with scissors and took off one of Joel’s toes, that something inside him broke.

Eventually, Joel begged.


	26. ELLIE XIV

**ELLIE**

Jacob sat on the stairs in front of Ellie, watching her closely. “You look tired.”

“I am tired.”

“I brought you something to drink. To say sorry for before.”

Ellie kept quiet. His temperature could flare again, and there was a gentle steam rising from the white cup he held in his hand. No need to risk bad burns, though she yearned for a sip.

“Are you still mad at me?”

“No,” she said at once. “Just tired.”

Jacob nodded. “It'll all be over soon, I promise. You won't need to worry about anything again.”

Worry stirred in her gut, a dull panic that felt like acid churning in her chest. “Please don't hurt us. Where's the man – the one I was with?”

“Somewhere he can't hurt you.” Jacob sat the cup down on the stairs beside him and rose to his feet. He closed the short few feet of distance between them and kneeled down, his face hovering in front of hers. A week ago she might have recoiled, but Ellie knew better than that. Anything could be the spark that lit the fire. She held his eyes, not smiling but not frowning. Ellie would stay strong in the face of the man that probably wanted to rape her.

Jacob’s face kept coming closer, his tongue rubbing across his lips. She couldn't lean away. She wouldn't.

“Where were you?” she asked. His head stopped dead and moved back a little. His thin eyebrows wrinkled in confusion.

“You're gonna have to be more exact than that, little owl.”

“When everything went to hell. Where were you?”

Jacob got back to his feet and returned to the stairs, propping himself down beside the cup. A long, heavy silence held between the two of them. He was watching something in his mind, Ellie thought, a movie playing of his life. Highlights. _I wonder what the highlights of my life would be._

“I was in a little town not far from here,” he said, kindly. There was no malice in his voice, no strained tones. Jacob was quite calm, but his eyes did not meet Ellie’s. Of that she was glad. “We lived happily, and I was still young. I don’t know what age I am now, or how long it’s been… but things have changed.”

“How have they changed?”

“Some completely, others not at all. I still got my little girls, for one. That’s good. I love my babies, my little birds.” He paused, staring off into the distance, and Ellie didn’t want to disturb it. Eventually, he continued. “I lost my little girl once and I don’t wanna ever lose one again.”

“Tell me more,” Ellie said, not wanting him to stand again. He might get angry on the way out – she had to keep him talking. And, besides that, she wanted to know what warped a man into this. Maybe he would tell her, maybe he wouldn’t.

“You really wanna know ‘bout me? I’ll tell ya. Me and my little girl lived in a town, not too far from here. Then the night things changed, I lost her and – I’ll admit – I lost a bit of me too. So, few days later, the military roams in and starts killing people. I don’t want that, so I kill one of them. I take their suit, I join them. They form groups based not far from here – the place you came from… So I stick with them for a long time, until one day they get access to their old database. They notice some things ain’t right, that I’m not one of ‘em. They kick me to the kerb with the other group – the ‘Civilians’. I’m tellin’ you now, little owl, I ain’t no civilian. I’m a warrior and a father and a survivor.

“So the Civilians accept me when I tell ‘em most of my story. I tell them about my little girl. She was called Lynette, you see. Named after the Linnet bird – a beauty. They welcome me in, and I take care of the little ones. Day care. I take care of them all real good. They loved me, and I loved them. We had a bond, you see?”

Weakly, Ellie nodded. Jacob’s bottom lip began to quiver and he bit down on it, hard enough to stop it shaking but not enough to draw blood from it. “I keep them company in the bad world, in the terrible world… but their parents don’t like that. They find out and they torture me for keeping their kids close to my heart. They… they… they... did terrible things. Evil people, but they couldn’t hold me. I got free, took one of their women. Dragged her into the forest by her hair. Me and her got real close. I’m tellin’ you true here – she started to really love me. Eventually I didn’t need to chain her to trees after a while. She _defended_ me. We moved about in the little houses just down the road from here. That way.”

His finger pointed behind Ellie and for a moment she almost turned to look. Even if she did, all that was behind her was solid concrete. She was, after all, in a basement.

“She gave me my beautiful girls, but then something changed in her. I dunno what. She became very dark and she – she made some bad choices. I had to put her down.”

Ellie was horrified at everything she was hearing. The implications were all there, the trail of crumbs that she could follow to understanding, and she wished she could leave the crumbs where they lay. She didn’t want to know anymore.

“My only regret,” he said, rising to his feet, “is that you won’t one day give me children too. Neither will my other beautiful little girls.” He wiped something away from his eyes – tears, maybe, but he could be faking. Ellie wasn’t sure. He rose to his feet and turned, starting to wander back upstairs, but then he stopped.

Ellie braced herself for a beating again, for a burn when he threw the cup over her, but instead he simply brought it over to her and placed it in her hands, then loosened the ropes a little. It would never be loose enough for her to break free, but it let her drink some of the warm liquid – she wasn’t sure what it was. Warm juice? Tea? Coffee? No way to know.

“Drink up, little owl.” Jacob ruffed her hair and headed back up the stairs.

Guilt trickled in her a little, but there was nothing she could do about that. Ellie counted the minutes until night fell, until she heard his heavy footsteps treading away to bed, and then she would get out of here, and she would kill him.

* * *

The time came quicker than she thought it would. Jacob’s footsteps rose across her often that day, but each time she knew it was too early. Not enough time had passed for the night and, true enough, he always came back. She tried to consider the layout of the house, but there was very little for her to know. Ellie had been in this room for so long that she had little sense of anything anymore.

It had been weeks. Ellie had seen the full moon on one of the first nights she’d come here, and the night before she’d seen it once again. All that time. Joel had to be alive, he had to be okay. _If I get out of here,_ she wondered, _should I look for Joel first, or kill Jacob?_

The absurdity of the question didn’t occur to her at that time – she was just desperate to get out. Get anywhere. She missed Joel and the feeling of fresh, cold air in her lungs. Ellie missed the adrenaline rush from running from staggering and screaming infected in a forest. The two of them keeping an eye on one another.

 _He lied to you_ , she remembered for no particular reason. _He killed Marlene and the Fireflies and he lied to you._

And that was true. Ellie couldn’t refute that – Joel had told her all the truth, he’d told her what he’d done and that he did not regret it. Marlene and Joel had that in common – everyone deciding what was right for Ellie without consulting with her, without giving her any say in her life. Who knows what Ellie would have done if the Fireflies had _come_ to her? All Ellie knew was that both of them did what they did because they were selfish.

_And I forgive them both._

But that didn’t mean Ellie would ever trust him again, because she didn’t know if she _could._

Heavy footsteps thudded across the ceiling above her, up the stairs. She could tell they were stairs from the way they moved away from her as they moved across. _This could be it_ , she thought, and waited.

* * *

Tick tock goes the clock, soon Ellie will put up a fight.

Tick tock goes the clock, soon someone will die.

* * *

As she waited, she wondered what Joel was doing right at that moment. Was he in a chair, like hers?  _He could be eight feet under the ground_ , Ellie thought, hoping he was okay. She couldn’t despair – not now. She’d find him.

Enough time had passed, she reckoned. It was time.

Ellie came to life, taking the cup and throwing it to her left, and hearing it crash and ripple apart into bits. Some large chunks remained. Side to side, side to side. She rocked her the chair that she would not let be her tomb from side to side, left to right. It almost capsized at the wrong time, but her body willed it the other way. The chair collapsed, its wooden arm breaking. _If someone hears me then this won’t work. I have to be quick._

Her wrist hit the ground hard, and a piece of the splintered broke slid beneath her skin, touching bone. It was difficult to supress her cry, and it came out instead as a high grunt. She wrestled her wrist as far away from the wood as she could, finding it reddened. Blood leaked out onto the floor.

Ellie’s fingers moved like frantic tentacles reaching for the shards of cup, wriggling herself forward to reach them. In worry that she’d cut herself on landing, she’d thrown it perhaps too far. _It’s going to fail_ , she thought. _He’s going to find me like this in the morning and he’s going to kill me._

But no. She was a fighter. Someone would die tonight, be it her or Joel. Her legs flailed against the cold, stone floor, propelling her further into the wood and closer to the shards. The tips of her outstretched fingers were touching it, so close, the sharp tops running across her fingers, and then she grabbed it and flicked it back towards herself.

_Yes! Go Ellie, go Ellie._

Ellie gripped the sharp edge between her and sawed at the rope binding her. Bit by bit the rope lessened and became string, sawing her way to freedom. Her wrists split and – though her left arm still ached and leaked blood – she was free, at least in part. She straightened her back and sawed at the binding around her chest, the only way to get to her feet.

When that was settled, and her legs free. Ellie rose, shakily, to her feet. Her legs pulsed with a great, sore cramp… but she was free. _Yes, yes, yes_ , she thought, shaking her legs, taking long gulps of breath. The soles of her feet stung, like standing on a thousand tiny pokers, as she took a few steps forward. A part of her wanted to run up the stairs, run out into the forest and never look back.

But she wouldn’t leave Joel like that. He wouldn’t do that to her.

 _And I have unfinished business_ , she thought, eyes sweeping around the dark floor illuminated only by the flickering light in the corner of the room. Ellie reached down and lifted the sharpest piece of broken cup that she could find. It was fifty percent bigger than her hand and curved just so. _A good shape for slitting the bastard’s throat_ , she thought, and headed up the stairs.


	27. JOEL XIII

**JOEL**

Night fell when he closed his eyes, and when he opened them again the sun was rising in the distance. The light slid into the room through thin slits between the boards. The man had put them there, nailed them, to punish Joel. You'd have thought taking a toe was enough, but no. The man managed, quite effortlessly, to reach newer depths of callous cruelty. Above, sometimes Joel could hear footsteps. Never directly above him, they had faded before then. A staircase, he realised. I'm under a staircase.

Though he faced the ceiling for all the weeks that he's been here, never had Joel put together the simple truth that the ceiling above him slanted upwards to the right. His focus was always on the window. Not for the light, though. Joel craved the dark. A man could sleep in full light and full dark, but when slants of pale yellow light reached his eyes and no where else, his vision glowed. His eyelids would twitch as he lay there. Joel was forced to sleep only when he was exhausted.

Some days he was gripped by the hope the man allowed him; he would loosen Joel's chains just a little to let him relax if he were good, and Joel tried to be good. He did. But the man didn't always like that. Sometimes he came in with his temper flared and swinging, mindset rough and angry, and there was nothing Joel could do to sate the man then. He just had to endure and survive. The cuts on his hands and face,now fully scarred over, were proof that he had.

But even Joel could only take so much.

Thoughts of suicide swirled in his head often, and it made him think of Tommy. All the things his little brother had beaten, and now he was gone. He thought on death often, the faces of the fallen on his mind. _Henry, Sam, Tommy, Tess, Sarah…_

Joel thought about how they would never again think or bear witness to anything again. The world just went on without them, as it was going on without Joel and Ellie now. _Am I dead?_ he wondered. _Not yet._

To Joel's mind, death _was_ coming. Whether it was his or someone else's, well that was the mystery... but it was coming. He couldn’t avoid it.

 _And it has to be me_ , he thought, perhaps hoping he could make a deal with the universe. Don't let it be Ellie. _She can keep going._

“Why do you wanna die, Joel?” It was Tess again. She was in the corner of the room, hair tied back. Her neck was mauled and bloody, and she looked just like she had the day she fell...

“I don't.”

“Fooled me.”

“One of us aren't gonna make it out. Me or Ellie. I choose me.”

She sighed. “It doesn't work like that.”

“Yeah.”

“You look tired,” she said, striding forward. Slants of moonlight fell across her face and lit up the freckles on her face. “And by that I mean you look like shit.”

Joel couldn't help but laugh a little. It was one thing to imagine the dead, but to laugh at their jokes? “I'm losing my mind here.”

“I don't think so. When he cut off your toe, he give you antibiotics?”

Joel thought for a moment, the memory hazy. He'd been drugged out bad when that happened, and weeks had passed since. “Not to my knowledge.”

“Doesn't surprise me. He don't look like the doctor type.”

“He said he gave some to Ellie. Healed up her infection.”

“Which one?”

“The life-threatening one. Shouldn't you already know all this stuff?”

Tess laughed. “There's rules?”

“Probably. Damned if I know.”

“Here's the deal, Texas.” She leaned over Joel, head tilted to the side like an inquisitive schoolchild. “You ain't gonna die here. You're gonna escape this world of shit you currently inhabit, and make it back out into the other world of shit.”

“You psychic or something?”

She shrugged. “I'm telling you what to do, not telling you what will happen.”

He closed his eyes. “Alright then. So how am I gonna get out of here? Last time I checked, I got chains around my legs, arms and torso. I ain't goin’ anywhere unless –”

The sound of metal against metal, the latch on the door at the stairs’ peak opening. Joel opened his eyes and Tess was gone, but pale white light that could only be from the moon was opening into the room, ever so slowly. Fear rippled through Joel. The man only came at night when something was wrong, and Joel could feel rage emanating from him at the top of the stairs. Pure terror, the sort that only came once in a lifetime. Pure terror and —

“Holy shit, Joel. You look worse than I do.”

“... Ellie?”

Light footsteps tapped on the way down the stairs, but it wasn't until she was closer to him that he could see her. Her hair was oily and her face reddened – and not wish make-up. Joel's first guess would be a mixture of the cold, and old dried blood. A thin purple line ran the side of her nose, where it had been burst.

“Yeah. I gotta get you out of here.” Her small hands, that were white as wax, came up and tugged at his binding. “Holy shit, chains? You've got it worse than I did. Did he hurt you?”

Joel didn't say anything. A part of him didn't believe that this was really Ellie, that his imagination was drawing her up to build up his hopes.

Ellie put her hand on his forehead. “You've got a fever. One of your wounds must be infected. Shit, you've got more than enough.” She pulled at the chains more, but they weren't coming free.

Testing time, Joel thought.

“There's a bolt under the table that keeps in chains in place. Three of 'em, I reckon.”

Over the week, Joel had more than enough time to ponder what was keeping in place. He'd worked out how the chain mechanisms worked, and whenever the man had loosened him, he'd loosened the bolts. If Ellie was real, she’d let him out.

And she did.

The chains eased off Joel's lower section first, and then his chest and arms. Strong as she was for her age, Ellie – who Joel now thought to be real – struggled to hold them, and they slid from her wrists and onto the cold hard floor with a loud clang.

“Shit,” Ellie muttered. “Can you walk?”

“Not sure.”

Joe swung his legs around from the table, ever so slowly. His muscles felt heavy and laden, and when his foot his the floor searing pain shot like bolts of lightning up his legs, to just above his knee. The man had forced Joel's shoes on him, to keep the wound from getting infected. He didn't want to waste medicine on Joel, after all.

“I can walk. Not fast, but I can walk. Are you okay? Did he – Ellie, did he–?” Joel struggled with the words, but Ellie caught on quickly enough.

“No. No, I'm okay.”

They looked at each other for a few moments, understanding. A compress had released in Joel, a deep release from worry. He was glad he was okay. Joel nodded. “Come on, we gotta get out of here.”

“No,” Ellie said, helping Joel fully to his feet. She said it all too suddenly, as though she knew the question was coming and she had the answer prepared. “No, Joel.”

“Ellie, if he has a gun—”

“I haven't seen a gun, Joel, but Jacob has—”

The corners of Joel's eyes wrinkled. “Jacob?”

“That's his name. Yeah. He didn't tell you his name?”

“No, he didn't. Kept away unless he was torturing me.”

Ellie looked past it, maybe trying to keep a level head. Adrenaline was pumping through Joel, and it must have been in Ellie too. The high of liberation – she'd saved him. _Thank you,_ he wanted to say, but they had to get away first. From the man. _Jacob._

“We have to get out of here, now,” he said as they limped towards the stairs. Every step would be a tax.

“No,” Ellie said. “He has little girls in here.”

“And it ain't our business, Ellie. I know that's not what you want hear right now, but –”

“You're fucking right it isn't, Joel. He terrorises them. The one that shot me only did it because of how afraid they were –”

“They shot you?”

“It doesn't matter. We're saving them, Joel.”

Joel paused before the stairs, the wounded foot hovering just above the first stone step. His focus drifted a little, unsure. “They won’t come, Ellie. I’m not risking your life to save a bunch of girls. For all we know they’re on his side.”

“I don’t want to take them with us,” Ellie said with iron in her voice. It was then that Joel realised what Ellie wanted; she didn’t want to save the girls, she wanted to kill the man. She wanted Jacob dead for what he’d done to her. For what felt like a long time, though in truth was very little time at all, Joel thought. He dwelled on revenge and risk. Closure and death. His mind rolled back and saw the soldier that had gunned Sarah down and let him emerge unscathed. _If I could go back and kill him again, would I?_

“Okay.”

Ellie nodded, and they made their way – slowly and with some difficulty – up the stairs.

* * *

Joel’s capacity to walk was coming back in pieces. The pain still slid up and down his muscles and bones as though his skin were being flayed, but he would adapt. His balance had returned, at least, and Ellie moved away from him (with great trepidation) half-way up the stairs, when he’d asked. They moved slowly, still. Ellie was always mindful of the doors at the top of the stairs; Joel’s ears were always pricked for any sign of trouble.

He looked out the window at the top of the stairs and saw the thin trail of path they’d been caught on before. _We’ll have to head back out that way_ , Joel thought. _I don’t know the way from here, this place is new._ Around the cabin, the forest had largely been cleared out. Cut-down stumps remained, tinted red even in the light. Joel’s eyes sidled along the wooden planks that made up the cabin and decided that the man must have made this place himself.

“Ellie, stay behind me,” Joel whispered and Ellie did so. With great trepidation, he made his way along the corridor. The wood creaked quietly under his limped footsteps, and red flames were cast across a wall ahead, the source from a room. If Joel could have wished for anything then – other than to be clear of the place – it would have been for a weapon. Under his feet the wood continued to moan, just lightly, not enough to be heard all the way upstairs, Joel hoped.

Closer to the light now, to the empty door frame. No hinges were attached, not that he could see from this distance. _There must be a weapon in there_ , he thought. _Something useful._

And when he turned the corner, it was the first thing he saw. Beside an armchair facing away from him, facing the fire, sat an axe. It was long and thin, and the deep, curved blade glinted like jewels in moonlight. It seemed as though the man, Jacob, kept the blade it good condition. Surely, it must have been used to clean the house.

He entered the room, Ellie behind him, neglecting to check the shadowed corners.

“Now…”

Small footsteps reached them before anything could be done. The young girls were quick enough not to grab them, but simply to place the blades across their necks. The duo stayed still. _If I shrink back they’ll still stab me, or worse they’ll slit Ellie._ Joel wouldn’t risk that. He looked to his side – a short girl, maybe nine or ten – with red curls. Her eyes were green as emeralds, he could make them out by the light of the fire. The girl that was holding Ellie, he couldn’t see.

“Let us go. We don’t want trouble. We just wanna leave.”

Jacob rose from the armchair and came out, more a silhouette than a man. Behind him crept a small girl, not even coming up to his waist. Short blonde hair barely wrapped around her ears, cut haphazardly, no doubt by the other girls or the man. _This is the one that shot Ellie_ , Joel knew at once. He imagined the mask on top of her face, hair wrapping around its tip. _She looks so much like Sarah._

But it wasn’t Sarah, he knew. Sarah would be twenty-nine. But she wasn’t, because she was dead and buried. _Not too far from here_ , he realised.

“Let you go? You stupid son of a bitch,” Jacob sneered with a true hate. There was malice in his eyes. His hand reached for the axe and lifted it, twisting the handle in his hands, rubbing a lone, long finger up to the metal. “You came here to kill me, and now you want me to let you _go?_ You’re the lowest type of –”

“Hey,” came Ellie’s voice from behind Joel, defiant. “Shut the fuck up, man. We came here to get medicine.”

“No, no, no, no, you came here to kill me. Your little friend told me when I said I was gonna take one of his fingers and put it in the jar with his toe. When I take you back downstairs, I’m taking your foot. Disgustin’.”

Jacob paced, axe in hand, across the fireplace and the little girl. Her eyes were on the floor, perhaps unwilling to meet Joel’s eye, perhaps instructed not to meet it.

“If you don’t let us out of here –” Ellie started…

“ – what? Will you kill me? Sparrow, Starling, bleed them both a little.”

The two girls pressed their knives into Joel and Ellie's throats; not enough to damage them, but it stung hard and blood dribbled down Joel’s neck. He needed a way out of here, one that wouldn’t endanger Ellie. He had to be careful, he had to think… but there was a newfound fear in him. Losing Ellie over the past weeks had taught him that he couldn’t lose her – ever. He had to keep Ellie safe.

Ellie seemed to have other intentions. “Fuck this.”

A mirror in front of Joel, one he only just noticed, showed him what happened next. Ellie shrunk back from the girl’s blade and put her hand at the base of the girl’s shoulder. _Snap._ Before the girl holding Joel’s throat hostage could react, the broken girl’s knife was slid into her neck and she crumpled to the floor screaming. Ellie picked up the spare knife and handed it to Joel.

Jacob began to scream and cry. He walked backwards a little, not fear – disbelief. He was staring at the two girls, the only one left alive was staring up at him, crying out with pain. Ellie’s eyes were on the man, unmoving. The man’s howls drowned out the roar of the fireplace, and his body blocked out most of its light. The axe began to twitch in his hand, and then it was still. A calm fell over him – the eye of the storm, circling, waiting for a chance to hack Joel and Ellie apart and then throw whatever was left of them in the fire.

“My daughters,” he muttered. “You come in my house and hurt my family. You hurt my family. You hurt my family.”

Neither Ellie nor Joel said anything, and Joel knew that Ellie likely felt, at least partially, guilty for what she’d done. _Reckless_ , Joel thought, and now they were in more danger… but had she done what he couldn’t? Had they switched places?

“Come closer to us and we will kill you,” Joel said, his voice thick with the sting of cold steel on skin.

“You’ve hurt my family for the last time,” Jacob said, and lifted the axe. The little girl behind him stepped out from behind him and skirted around to the front. “You’re gonna burn in hell,” he whispered and lifted the axe.

And then, right before he lunged at them, murderously hacking at them, the little girl intervened. One mighty push was all it took to tumble Jacob backwards… the axe slipped out and away from his hand, twisting through the air and clattering to the floor with a dull thud. It clanged before Jacob’s body, twisted backwards, reached the flames. His head banged hard on the roof the fireplace; and he burned.

All eyes were on him; the howls of the poor girl on the floor resonated out and through the cabin. In front of the fireplace, the small girl that had shot Ellie was crying in front of the fireplace. Inside the fireplace, Jacob was writhing and crying out. The smell of burning skin wafted through the cabin and reached Ellie and Joel. He struggled and screamed; the blisters appeared on his face all at once, bursting pastels of pale pink. He collapsed out of the fireplace, losing but not lost, his clothes and the wood all aflame.

Instinct made Joel take a few steps back, holding Ellie away. The man, on all fours, tried hard to move towards them, screaming. Burned flesh thick in the air, pieces of burning clothes making rounds in the air.

“JACOB! JACOB!” The girl on the floor was crying.

“Ellie, we need to get out of here.”

Ellie’s eyes did not leave the screaming, burning body in front of them. “Not… not yet.”

“Ellie.”

“Not yet, Joel. The girls.”

The small girl wasn’t looking at Jacob’s smouldering body, which was becoming more and more still. His body was shutting down in shock, but if he died it wouldn’t be for some time. It didn’t matter to Joel; they’d be far away from here.

Ellie walked over to the smaller girl. “Come on. We need to get you out of here.”

“I did a bad thing,” the little girl mumbled.

“You’ll fit right in with us,” Ellie said, and took the little girl’s hand.

And they left the burning, charred body of Jacob to die, and the girl who tried to defend him, shoulder popped, on the floor.

* * *

The trail was lit by the pale slant of moon in the sky.  _Just like the last time,_ he realised.  _It’s been a month. We were trapped in there for a month._ They walked in silence up the path, Ellie still holding the little girl by the hand.

“Where are we going?” the little girl asked.

“Away from here,” Ellie replied. It was the way Joel would have spoken to Sarah a long time ago. _I wonder if Sarah and Ellie would get along._ “Somewhere safe.” Ellie glanced at Joel, and the look they shared seem to ask the same question: is there such a place?

Further along the road they found the clearing; in the distance the moon hovered not far above the farm where Joel had tried to restore Ellie’s wound (and largely, he thought, failed). It seemed like so long ago they’d set down that path in search of a gas mask, knowing full well that it might end with someone’s death, hoping that it would be the kid’s… and now, here she was, walking the path with them. Away from the cabin. Away from the man. _Jacob._

But he wasn’t completely gone. Not yet.

In the bushes behind them, something stirred in the shadow. Joel looked back past Ellie and the girl. “Did you hear that?”

Ellie squinted back. “No. What?”

The wind was whistling through the trees and branches. Thickets of bushes were moving from side to side, and the crunching of footsteps had stopped. _Am I imagining things?_ For thirty seconds Joel simply stood there, one foot stronger than the other and holding him up, staring into the branches.

“Joel?”

Snapped from his stupor. “Yeah?”

“We need to keep going.”

“Yeah. Yeah.”

They kept going, plodding on. The _snap_ kept following them, and Joel readied the knife he’d taken from the dead girl. Closer, closer, closer, closer. _Come and get it._

And then it came.

He burled the knife around, ready to strike, but it didn’t come for him. The girl, shoulder locked at the wrong side, lunged. The axe took the younger girl in the neck; she shrieked in pain – and blood spurted out of the side of her head. Joel ran towards them, but his limping hindered him. Ellie got there quicker. A quick slash with her own knife across the girl’s throat and the other girl fell away from her victim.

But the axe remained.

“Holy shit, no,” Ellie muttered. She tugged the axe out and cast it away from them. Both of them tried to use their hands to stop the bleeding. _There’s nothing we can done_ , he thought as their hands became bloodied. The dying girl looked up, her bright eyes fading. She looked so, so sad.

“Come on,” Ellie muttered. “It’s okay. You’re going to be okay. I promise. You’re going to be okay… come on. Joel, stop the bleeding. Joel, stop it. Please.”

“It’s too late. She’s gone.”

“No. Stop the bleeding. Joel, come on. You’re gonna be okay. I promise.”

“Ellie, stop. Come on.”

“I SAID STOP THE BLEEDING! WE HAVE TO SAVE HER!”

“She’s gone.”

Ellie cried over the dead girl’s body for a few moments, and then her sadness turned to rage. She flew over to the axe-girl. Her throat was bubbling with blood and air, gargles escaping. Her hand went for the blade and she slid it into the girl’s body, making her jolt with every stab.

Over. And over. And over.


	28. ELLIE XV

**ELLIE**

The mid-day sun was high up, held in place snugly by white wisps of cloud around a vast blanket of pale blue sky. It was warm on Ellie’s face and helped speed along drying her hands and clothes. In front of them, the open lake they found in a surprisingly large clearing of trees. Red swirled and drifted away from them, thinning in the water. After they’d left the trail, it was Joel that had led her here to clean their hands of the blood. Though she’d scrubbed with rags, not all of it came away – dirty red, thick and dried, still gathered underneath her nails.

“Here.”

Joel was holding out a thin piece of broken stone, sharp at the edge. She smiled weakly and took it from him, sliding the sharp edge along the underside of her nail. The dried-out blood came out in scrapes rather quickly, the pale red disappearing from the clear edge. Unthinking, an auto-pilot of sorts, she repeated the process with each nail and then offered the stone back to Joel. He held up a hand and shook his head. Hard as she could, she tossed it far away, a high arc that fell slowly into the water. Before she moved from her rocky perch, she waited.

Ellie waited for the ripples from the water to come back to her, and it felt like a very long time indeed. She waited as they made their steady way out in a single expanding circle, towards her and towards the other edge of the lake, half a mile across. As they came towards her, Ellie’s mind was empty and her eyes were vacant.

“You ready?”

Her eyes did not waver. “I guess.”

Joel rose first and came over to her, offering a hand. She took it and he helped her up. Though he walked in front of her, she could have moved faster. He still had a bad limp from whatever Jacob had done to him; his walking had improved, but it was still slow. If Clickers had come at them right then and there, there was nothing they would be able to do but fight – and they would still, in all likelihood, just die there.

“It’s been a long time since we saw any infected,” Ellie said.

“We ain’t missin’ anything, I don’t think. The people we’ve met along the road are just as sick as the infected.”

Ellie couldn’t help but be at least, in part, surprised by Joel’s words – but not in what she expected. “You think the infected are sick?”

“Yeah,” Joel said, nodding. “It was a person, still is a person. Don’t mean I have a problem with killin’ them – you have to, or they’ll kill you – but the person’s in there at first. Long time ago… me and Tommy had this friend. We lost him but he asked us to stay with him, ‘till he turned… and we did. We stayed with him until the end, and then a little longer.”

“What – what happened?”

“He was still muttering when he turned, and sometimes when you and me are out here, you can hear ‘em talking. _I’m so hungry. Help me. I’m sorry._ They say these things. Poor bastards.”

“Sorry,” she muttered, the two of them coming to a stop.

“Long time ago. Some wounds are fresher than others. You okay?”

“I’ll be better when we bury her.”

Ellie had rolled the little girl’s eyes closed. A piece of fabric from her own shirt had been easy to rip away and tie tightly around the gaping wound. Blood had welled up into the fabric and soaked it quickly enough, but the sun was warm and the edges were drying and crisping out. It had been six hours – though it felt like longer – since they’d carried her body with no aim but Joel’s general idea of direction all the way here. The sun had risen and the moon had disappeared, but Ellie’s thoughts had stayed the same. Ellie’s guilt had stayed the same.

 _Joel was right_ , she thought. _If we’d just tried to get straight out of there, the girls would still be alive, and now they’re all dead. They’re all dead and it’s my fault._

Though Ellie wanted to lift her, the little girl was heavier than Ellie thought she would be. Joel, with a little difficulty, leaned down and scooped her up, and together they carried her around the lakeside. “It would be nice if you could see this,” she said, keeping up with Joel. They walked side by side; the little girl’s head nearest to Ellie. “You can’t deny that view.”

And she was so right. The sun fell down and reflected itself across the water, making it pale blue and almost transparent. Near her she could see grasses growing in the water, lily pads floating on the surface closest to the banks. Deeper in, though she could only see faint ripples of movement, trout and other fish stirred in the water, racing about and playing games with one another. They swam between reeds and plants that reached up out of the water and bloomed into big petals, some of deep purples and reds, others with pale yellows that reminded her of an old stain on a shirt she once owned. She’d lost that shirt, a long time ago.

“Where will we bury her?” Ellie asked, unsure. There was no sand on the banks of this junior lake – its tributaries were too small to allow that kind of rugged flow, and so only rocks sat around the surface, but that was okay. It made for a nice place to sit and look out. At night, Ellie was completely certain, it would take on a different atmosphere. The trees all around you would rustle in the wind and you’d have one eye over your shoulder always; the glimmer of the moonlight on the river would distort with the wind, or a bird would fly above it, and you’d be forced to get to your feet and double-take. Dark nights could warp even great beauty into terrible fear, and Ellie knew fear.

“I know a place not far from here. If you don’t like it, we’ll find another.”

She would have thanked him, but she did not. There was no need to thank Joel. Ellie thought, at least on some level, Joel had to understand feelings similar to what she was going through. His were more profound, the loss of Sarah would have affected Joel far more than the loss of some little unnamed girl, of course, but on a base level it was the same, was it not? The loss of someone you swore to protect. Maybe not aloud, but to yourself – and those promises were more sacred to Ellie than any others. Ellie had told Joel what she wanted to do, and she’d told herself what she wanted to do, and just when they thought they’d escaped, it was snatched away by the cold bite of an axe swung by desperate, angry hands.

The hands were not desperate or angry anymore. They were limp and dumped to the side of the path, into the bushes. Joel had asked if she wanted to bring that girl too, and Ellie had said no. That girl – the axe-swinger – was as mad as Jacob. _She was a victim too_ , Ellie knew, but that didn’t stop her own rage bubbling to the surface in livid agony. She had stabbed at the girl until she didn’t move anymore, and then rolled her over with her feet until her body became tangled in the bushes… and that was where she still was. Maybe infected would find her, take parts of her until there was nothing left, or maybe it would just be the flies and natural way of the world that broke her apart until only bones were left behind. It didn’t matter to Ellie. The axe-killer was dead, as was the axe-victim.

And she had been so pretty. Ellie hadn’t noticed until the firelight danced across her face on that night. Her short, blonde hair had suited her nicely and reminded Ellie of her own hair when she was younger, only her own was much darker. She had none of the innocence Ellie’s younger form possessed, at least, but she had all the worldly wisdom that would have revealed itself, in time, if given the chance. Maybe Ellie was looking too deeply into things; maybe she was just a frightened little girl that didn’t want to see any more people get hurt. _I can see myself in that too_ , she thought. _To stop people getting hurt, I killed two of them. They’re all dead._

“Every person we come across dies,” Ellie said.

A long and heavy silence punctuated only by the wind’s whistles. “It’s not your fault, Ellie. None of this is your fault.”

“I’m tired, Joel. I’m really tired.”

“Tired of what?”

She shrugged. “Tired of walking, tired of – everyone dying. Can you name anyone we’ve been with that hasn’t died? Sarah, Tess, Tommy, Maria, Henry, Sam, Ish, the girls. They’re all dead.”

Joel seemed lost in thought for a moment, until he spoke again as they found their way onto a small trail through the forest. The sunlight was still streaming through the trees; she could feel the fading warmth of summer on the back of her neck. “Bill ain’t dead. We left him alive and kickin’… what do you want to do?”

“I want to stop walking. Find a place and just stay there. A place where there’s no… _fighting_. No infected. Somewhere safe. Somewhere like…”

“–Boston?”

She’d never even considered Boston before. “Yeah. Somewhere like Boston.”

“Let me think about it.”

“Yeah.”

The leaves were still green, but they were falling from the trees all the same. Clusters of them sat at the bases of the trees. Fall was coming at Ellie and Joel at a pace that frightened her. Winter was a dark time, the ground cold and hard, but it had nothing on autumn. _In winter you have some hope that spring will come, but in autumn there’s only dread. Autumn is the death of hope._ It was Marlene that had told her that; they’d been rooting up an old tree to set-up base for something Marlene wouldn’t tell her about. In hindsight, she knew it had been something for the Fireflies, but back then it just seemed like a fun activity. A long time ago.

They followed the path with some difficulty at first, owing to its loosely defined nature. Vines had grown over and around the stones that made up the edges, concealing them. They went over a lonely hill and followed a tributary stream that ran opposite them until, in the distance, Ellie could see a bridge holding old ruined cars.

“This is it,” Joel said and, sure enough, at the edge of the trees there was a full layer of dirt that swirled semi-loosely in the wind. “This is good. Do you like it?”

Ellie took a few steps away from Joel and faced the forest and the sun above. It filtered through the leaves and came out in golden strands of light; when the leaves died, though Ellie was afraid, she knew it would be nice. They would curl a little and turn gold mixed with old green; though the sun would not be warm, there would be more than enough light.

“Yeah. It’s… it’s nice.”

Joel nodded and, slowly, set the poor dead girl down on a mattress of leaves. Her eyes were still closed, her hair so blonde it almost seemed a part of the yellow leaves she was bundled among. _Maybe they’ll keep her warm_ , she thought.

He limped over towards the ground and leaned down, starting to dig. “I want to help,” Ellie said, determined, and rushed over. She cupped her hands together and started to scoop away dirt. It came away far easier than she expected. To her surprise, she found two or three worms wriggling in the dirt.

She and Joel pulled the dirt away from the ground, though they were five feet apart on the strip – more than they had to be. The little girl hadn’t reached more than four and a half… she was young. Too young.

It didn’t take them long to dig a grave big enough for her, but Joel kept digging.

“Just a little more.”

“Why?”

“Infected can dig too. People already got to this one, I don’t want infected doubling the hurt.”

“Yeah. Thanks,” she said, smiling weakly.

They kept going.

* * *

A foot later, they placed her body lightly into the grave with some leaves Ellie picked herself, and then covered her up with the ground. Come winter, the ground would freeze over, and then nothing was getting to her – no matter how hard they dug.

“We did good, Ellie.”

“I don’t think so.”

“We got out of there and we’re both alive.”

Ellie nodded weakly, looking down at the grave. Her eyes cast around the forest and found what they were looking for – a purple flower. A light tug and it was out of the ground, and on top of the grave. “We’re the only ones.”

“Yeah.”

“Let’s go,” Ellie said and turned away from the grave. She wanted to go back through the forest and sit on a rock by the lake again for a little while.

“No,” Joel said. “This way.”

Joel led Ellie up a winding path that took them over the main road out of town. In the distance she could see the giant watch towers set around the borders. They were about half a mile off from the borders on this side, but there was no one there. Most people in the town were dead, all infected, but for some reason they hadn’t reared themselves in the town itself… still concentrated in the fortress that rose, a mass of solid steel and barbs.

“I’m surprised the infected haven’t come out the fortress place yet.”

“Yeah. I thought we were gonna have some trouble with them. Maybe the entrance collapsed with the fire. Didn’t look very secure.”

Joel seemed to struggle a little going up a hill, despite its smallness. “Are you okay?”

“Mostly. My foot hurts a lot, but it’ll go away. I’ll get used to it.”

“What’s it like?”

It was nice making small talk like that – it’s what Ellie missed most. The little talks between them as they walked, made their way. She was looking forward to stopping someday, hopefully soon, but they could have small talk sitting down too.

“Little bit off balance. Sore too – dull, not sharp. It’ll get better. We do plenty of walkin’, so I’ve got plenty of time to adapt.”

Ellie laughed. “We should think of a nickname for you.”

Joel feigned great surprise. “What? Ellie, are you tryna tell me that ‘Holy Shit Joel’ isn’t a nickname?”

“No,” she said, laughing. “It’s a _catchphrase._ ”

“Ahhh. Sorry. I’m from the south. We don’t put much stock in vocabulary.”

At the top of the hill Ellie could see the bridge fully now; it wasn’t large, just enough to bridge the gap between hills too steep to make a road. She could almost see the road surface itself, the hill they stood on bringing them up to the bridge’s level. Below it was a small patch of shadowed land, and in the distance a burned-out car.

“Here we are.”

“A bridge? You wanted me to see a bridge?”

Joel led Ellie down to the shadow under the bridge without any more words, and the world seemed to go quiet. The wind disappeared in there, but the sun did not. The entire north section of the underside was filled with light; the south was blanketed in velvet dark, blocked out.

“The light –”

“Yeah. It was intentional.”

“Why are we here, Joel?” she asked, but in truth Ellie knew the answer.

“Ellie, this is Sarah,” Joel said, kneeling over. She hadn’t noticed it before, but a wooden makeshift cross came out of the ground, and strings that might once have held flowers. 

Joel and Ellie knelt over Sarah’s grave.

 _I wish I’d brought flowers_ , she thought.

 _I wish I’d known her_ , she thought.

“It’s nice to meet you,” she said.

* * *

A long time went past where Sarah lay. Longer for her still, she’d been there for a twenty years or so. Still, Joel spoke to her in drabs here and there, telling little stories about things he and Tommy had done, things that they’d seen and did and said. It was strange, Ellie thought, to hear Joel refer to Tommy as “Uncle Tommy”, but that’s what he was to Tommy. He was her uncle, and Joel was “daddy”. It made her happy and sad, all at once.

The blue sky was shredded by red and purples when they decided to leave, and understandably it took Joel a little longer to pull away. But, eventually, he did. There were no goodbyes said, nor did their need to be. _He’s not coming back_ , Ellie thought. And she was right. Ten minutes later, they sat on the bridge.

“We’re goin’ away from here, Ellie, and we ain’t coming back.”

“Where?”

“I think… maybe we should go back to Boston.”

She nodded. “It’s a long walk.”

“When’s that stopped us? Since when has anything stopped us? We’ll try and find a car again. Stick out of the cities as much as we can and we don’t need to make the same mistakes we made last time.”

Another nod. “Yeah. Okay.”

“Okay.”

“Boston it is.”

“We’ll find somewhere to keep for the night and start in the morning. I don’t wanna be walkin’ through the forest at night, not again.”

“Yeah,” Ellie said, looking out across the bridge. The sun was setting in front of Joel and Ellie, and fall was coming for both of them. _But we’ll make it_ , she thought, with grim uncertainty. _Endure and survive._


	29. JOEL XIV

** JOEL **

Doors clanged, shaken to the very hinges by the gusts that drove through the small town’s streets. Joel reckoned they were somewhere in Mississippi, maybe further north. He’d forgotten the names of a lot of the states, and road signs weren’t common they way they’d come. They’d crossed in off the major roads and stuck instead to the railway lines that ran north-east. Following the roads was the surest way to get killed, and he couldn’t be sure that small sprouts of hunters were dotted along the major highways. It’d been his call, the direction they’d taken, and for the most part, he’d been happy with it until now.

“We should’ve kept goin’ north. Comin’ here was a bad idea.”

Ellie’s eyes were set in the distance, at the grey wall of wind. “What’ll we do?”

“We need to get in a buildin’ before it gets here.”

“Or?”

“Or it’ll probably kill us.”

“Damn. Outside sucks.”

Joel smirked. “You ain’t the first teenager I’ve heard say that. Come on. See that farmhouse up ahead? If we make for there now, we should be alright.”

She nodded and they made their way across an overgrown field towards the rising red farmhouse in the distance. It was a small place, mostly, but if a storm was coming, no doubt they’d had them before in these parts, so they ought to have a storm cellar. That was the best place for them. The wind was picking up around their feet as they moved quickly through the heavy growth, scattering loose dead corn. The leaves were slapping against one another hard, making loud noises. In the distance, something metal snapped. _Another casualty of Mother Nature._

“What is it?”

“Hurricane, by the looks of it. A great big wall of wind. Usually they gave ‘em names.”

“Can I name it?”

Joel laughed loudly, but even still there was doubt in him that Ellie had heard it. The wind was tearing things up quickly on the other side of the town, and in the distance a flash of light followed a few seconds later by the deep roll of thunder signalled that it weren’t far off. Still, she was grinning like a maniac when he looked around to make sure she was alright, so she must have heard something.

“There’s no way in hell I’m lettin’ you name the hurricane.”

“Is this about Callus?”

“It was a stupid name for a horse.”

“I’ll come up with something normal for this one.”

“I doubt it.”

Joel stumbled when they found their way out onto a path that the plants had been unable to burst onto, a small but effective barrier dug long ago by the farmer managed to keep them from rooting through. “Here,” Joel said. The rustling sound of Ellie pushing her way out was completely muted by the roars from behind them. _Closer_ , Joel thought. “Come on. Run.”

They ran as fast as they could, behind them Joel was vaguely aware of things battering together, noises louder than he’d ever heard before, louder than the scream of his heart when Sarah died, louder than the silence when Tess told him she was marked for death, louder than the screams of a quarantine zone made desolate by brutality long ago. Rushing and screaming and twisting louder than all that had come in Joel’s life – and it was following them.

He looked over his shoulder and regretted it at once. Behind Ellie he could see it: the great, immense twister, cars pulled up around it like blue and red and yellow and silver moons, being made into twisted compressions of metal, shards that threatened to kill them… Only then did Joel truly gauge the intensity of the threat.

“Holy shit,” he muttered. “Ellie, c’mon, we gotta go faster. Now. Run. _Run!_ ”

They sped up and managed to reach the cellar. No chains bound it and the door came up easy. The red paint had long since stiffened and worn off, though remnants of it remained in peels and drabs. “In,” he said and let Ellie in first. Behind them it was so big, all the way up into the clouds and twisting them too. It would destroy the farm house, he knew at once. _It’ll destroy this house and we might get trapped in here._

It didn’t matter – not then. He dove in after Ellie and pulled the slanted storm doors shut, careful not to stumble on the stairs. They started to rattle, less so when the wooden panels fell down, locking them in place. Above, the wind howled and rattled at everything, tearing things from their rightful places. Joel shivered a little, glad to be away from it. In here, not even a thin tongue of wind licked at his face. They were secure. Safe as they could be.

“It smells like shit down here,” Ellie said from the bottom of the stairs. Her flashlight was already breaking the dark apart, her eyes no doubt scouring every inch of the place. _Looking for spores_ , Joel thought.

This would be a good place for something to die. Hopefully no infected had thought the same – the two of them hadn’t come across any masks yet. If the place were filled with spores further down and they were disturbed, Joel would have to leave. Ellie could stay, of course. She could drink spore smoothies and all she’d complain about was the taste.

“Hopefully that’s all it smells like.”

“I don’t see any spores. Just buckets of solid red. Paint, I think. Looks like whoever was here left in a hurry – they left their paint-brush sitting by the wall.”

Joel followed her down the steps and fumbled for a light-switch. A long shot, naturally, but when the his hand felt the plastic of the switch – right in the place where it should be, on the left hand side wall at the base of the stairs – he hoped…

And it paid off. The light flickered a few times, but a deep orange glow filled the room. A magical sight, almost enough to make him forget about the hurricane above them. He glanced around until he found what he was looking for – the wires that trailed, largely exposed and unsealed, to the generator. It was small, but enough to provide light, maybe even – …

… his eyes followed a single around the corner of the room, until –

… _heat!_

He moved over to it, thinking of little else and fumbled with the knobs. It’d been so long since he’d even touched one of the things. “What is it?” Ellie asked, coming over.

“It’s a heater, I think,” he said, trailing his fingers down the sides for a switch of some sort. “Or maybe it _was_ a heater. Hopefully it’s still got a little life in it.”

“It doesn’t look like it’s gonna work.”

Joel smirked. “Have a little faith. I thought hope was your thing.”

Ellie shrugged and flicked her torch off. She walked around the room, inspecting the walls. There were some photos up that Joel had noticed when the light had come on, but he was too busy to see them. Ellie might have said something then, but Joel didn’t hear it. He pushed down on a small button at the heater’s base and heard it crack, trying to fill itself. _It’s working_. Water began to trickle through it. It didn’t take long for Joel to feel the temperature change at all – the only two temperatures he and Ellie had known for a long time were cold and _holy shit Joel, it’s so fucking cold_.

“Let there be heat,” Joel muttered. Ellie soon joined him in sliding their hands up and down opposite sides of the rapidly heating piece of metal.

“How long do these things last? The hurricanes?”

“They can go on for a while, but it’ll go on past here within a few hours. It’ll rain pretty bad after, but until then we can keep warm in here. Eat some food.”

Ellie nodded. “We’ll have to turn this off soon.”

“We will?”

“Yeah. We can’t really risk running out of the fuel. I’m used to being cold – I don’t want to be dark _and_ cold.”

“You’re probably right,” Joel said. “Just a little longer, though.”

“Hell yeah – holy shit.”

Her eyes were locked on the other side of the room, something that made them widen with an emotion he hadn’t seen on her face in a long time. Instinctively, his hands came away from the heat and covered his mouth and nostrils as he turned to look. They swept the wall adjacent to them until, after several seconds, they focused on what Ellie had seen. “Oh dear.”

He turned back to Ellie and saw the sly smirk slung across her face. “No,” he said. “No.”

“You literally promised.”

“No.”

“Joel. Joel. Joel.”

“Ellie, Ellie, no. No.”

“Come _on_. Take one for the team!”

Joel buried his face deep in his hands and sighed a long, deep, heavy caricature. When he came up, she was still staring at him expectantly. A quick nod, and she was off. What felt like a second later, she was in front of him, holding out guitar with outstretched arms. Joel took it from him, slowly and hesitantly.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve played,” he said, just looking at it. The orange glow from the light made it shine more than it had any right to, even with the thick coat of dust that lay over the body. He pushed his lips together and blew hard, scattering the dust away from him – towards Ellie, close enough for her to scoff loudly.

“Okay.”

It took Joel a few minutes to try and tune the guitar, to remember what the notes were meant to sound like. Twisting his fingers into the familiar shapes and placing them on the cold metal strings. “I forget how you’re meant to strum the chords some,” he said, but even as he spoke, Joel began to play.

And he played on for a long, long time.


	30. ELLIE XVI

**ELLIE**

The footsteps followed them, so they sprinted harder. Ellie’s calves were aching hard, blood swelling in them and pushing against the muscles. The hard floor didn’t make running any easier, but hurting most of all was the floor. It was hard and reminded her of the ground that ran beneath Ora’s compound; the smell was similar too, only they were three floors up. The level of danger, Ellie estimated, was around the same.

Clicking screamed down at them, bouncing off the walls and down the corridors. Their footsteps were shaky and they tripped over things often, once or twice taken to the ground by their own lack of sight, but when one fell, another replaced them. They would run until their bones snapped and their thin skin withered away, and they were making good on that promise.

“Faster!”

“Easier said than done, Ellie. You ain’t pushing fifty-something.”

“You don’t know what age you are?”

“It’s harder when the newspaper ain’t catching you up on the date.”

They turned a corner and into a large room, staying quite still. The clickers kept running, but they would come back eventually, and the two of them couldn’t be sure some of them weren’t hanging back the way they’d come. Joel and Ellie shared a long, unhappy look – they both knew they’d be spending a few hours in this damp-ridden, infected-infested three-story hell.

“Close the door,” Ellie whispered. “Quietly.”

Joel nodded shortly and tried. It creaked a short-lived metal cry at the last moment, and the clicking resumed again, just down the corridor. Joel turned the latch and locked the door, but however slowly he did it, it was enough for the clickers to hear and come sprinting down the corridor again, screaming high and loud all the while. Ellie didn’t shiver – she rarely did anymore. Very little frightened her.

“They’ll go away. In a while.”

Ellie nodded, facing away from Joel. “Yeah.” The room was larger than she thought it would be – mounted on the wall was a large board, a dark colour. On it were chalk smearings. “What was it?”

Joel fell in at her side, looking at the board. “That? It was a blackboard.”

“I mean the room.”

“A classroom, I guess. We’re in a school. You didn’t notice?”

Ellie shook her head. “Last time we were in a school I didn’t have the time to look around much.” Her memories from the high school were muddied and blurred – adrenaline rushing through your veins, compelling you to run faster than you’ve ever ran before had that effect on a person. She remembered the gymnasium – the huge bloater. She’d only seen another one of those, maybe two. At the sewer’s end, right by Salt Lake City, the hospital… _Marlene’s tomb…_

“Yeah.”

She sat down on a chair, but a thick layer of dust held her up at least an inch above the seat. “Do you remember being in school?”

Joel shrugged and went to the back of the class. He was looking at posters, all dust and colour, like this broken world. “Not really. My dad used to take me and Tommy down. A little school. Our house was in a small town, a while off where we lived. It’s gone now.”

“Gone?”

“Yeah. Me and Tommy rolled through a while back on our way to Boston. Hell, we didn’t know that’s where we were goin’ at first. We were just headed north, heard about some form of quarantine zone. So we’re on our way and Tommy points. I see his finger first, just hoverin’ in the air. I don’t ask him anything, he didn’t talk much at first, neither did I. He helped me through… through, you know, but then when I stopped talkin’, eventually he did too. We both went quiet, like a dead radio.”

There was a long silence, and Ellie wanted to be the one to break it. She didn’t want Joel’s mind becoming lost in a dark place. Not again. “What was he pointing at?”

“Home. Our hometown. We went in, but it’d… it’d been burned. Probably accidents on the night everything went to hell. Nobody’s fault, just people trying to escape, cars bumpin’ into electricity poles, that kind of thing. Fire must’ve spread to the whole town. Not much escaped. Cars were charred too. Hell, we barely saw five runners. All the bodies we found were dead. Not from the fire, from the smoke. Poor bastards would’ve choked to death.”

Silence again. “Better choke than burn.” She got out of the chair and moved to the front of the classroom, taking up the larger chair – one that spun – behind a larger desk. This one had even more dust, and the table took the grand prize. Small ornaments – a little cow with a large blue nose – had their bases so swooned by the stuff that Ellie wasn’t sure she could move them if she tried.

Joel sat down in a chair, near the one she’d been in just a moment before. He was facing her, but their eyes did not meet. His were set on the floor, and Ellie’s were set on him. “Maybe.”

The clickers were still feeling around the door. It’d be a long time before they left. They’d been in similar situations before; trapped in a room, but they always escaped. As bad as times had been recently, they’d always endured. Their lives had been reduced to running constantly, a mix of sleeping with one eye open and not sleeping at all – but they were alive. Riley had died. Tess had died. David. Henry and Sam. Marlene. Ish. Tommy. Frances. Lydia. All of their stories had kept going and then ended.

Ellie thought about this a lot, and it had a strange effect on her mood. Sometimes it compelled her to think about how her story was still going, other times she wondered if it was nearing its end. She looked carefully at Joel; his wrinkles were deep gauges, like wounds across his face. He was getting _old_. They’d come into this room not because the corridor was blocked – Ellie could have kept going. They ushered themselves into this room because Joel was struggling to keep up. Even now, his breathing was louder than the clickers outside…

“Why did you go to Boston?”

Joel’s fingers traced the outline of lines on the desk. “Just the way we went. Found out about Boston and decided it was the best idea. Tommy… he wasn’t doing so great back then.” He laughed. “Well, neither of us were – but it was rough for him.” Before he finished the story, he hesitated. Ellie could tell there was more to come, in that silently communicative way only best friends have, so she waited. She didn’t break the silence. Not this time.

“A while before we decide to go to Boston – this was a long time after Sarah died, years even - Tommy started to… to struggle. Things were working out bad for us. There was a week straight where we ate nothin’ at all. This is what you need to know Ellie – we were doing worse than you or me have ever did. Worse than winter. Tommy was skin and bones, I was fallin’ every few steps from weakness. If a kid had found me, they’d have killed me and roasted me and got little from it. But I went out – told Tommy to wait inside. I said I wouldn’t be long, that I was just going to look to see what I could find…

“So I did. I went out and looked hard. Into the forest in the middle of winter with nothing but a backpack and a badly shredded jacket… I looked for _hours_ , Ellie. Walked around, not even noticin’ that the sun went from being right over my head to almost being in the ground. Eventually I found a small bush with berries on it. Maybe twenty of them. They were burst in places, brown, but I took them all. Headed back to the cabin we were using. Half way there I start to feel off, like something’s wrong… but nothing’s watching me. There’s nobody there. Just me standing at the edge of the forest – so I start to run. It turns into a sprint. I’ve never ran as fast because something is _wrong_.”

Joel stopped and said nothing else. He rose from the small table and walked over to the window, looking out. There was no ledge on the other side, nothing for them to use to escape… a solution would present itself. Eventually.

“What was wrong?”

Joel didn’t turn back to face her. “I found Tommy hanging from the roof.” He nodded deep and his head hung there, resting on his chest. “I cut him down and his face swelled with colour again, but he’d gone blue. He had the bruise around his neck for weeks, and he hated me long after that.”

“… He hated you? You saved him.”

“I did. I saved him from hell. I said it to you before – ending your life ain’t an easy way out. Tommy was in a dark place, like I was when Sarah died, but I never tried that. I – I couldn’t have done that. Not to my little brother… but he tried to do it to me.”

“Were you angry?”

“Angry? I was furious. I hated him and he hated me. I wouldn’t let him go more than ten feet from me at a time. Eventually it’s what made us fall out in Boston, long time later. He brought it up when we were in the dam. Blamed me for everything. Said I saved his life and let him live in a new hell, a different hell. Maybe he was right.”

“He was happy for a long time. He had Maria.”

“And then she was gone. And then he was gone.”

Ellie picked up the small cow and stared at its nose. For a minute she fumbled with it. In the distance the clickers’ amplified screams had moved down the hall. They were confused, it seemed to Ellie. She had a pretty good idea of their movements; watching them from a distance, thinking about their actions, had led to a strangely brilliant understanding of the infected. _People aren’t so simple_ , she thought and looked towards Joel.

“I don’t regret saving his life, Ellie, and I never will. I did the right think, god help me, I did the right thing. He could be angry at me all he wanted but there was no way in hell I’d have let my brother hang from a rafter to die. He deserved better than what he got, even in the end.”

Ellie had a vivid flashback to finding Joel with Tommy.

_“Tommy… come on, little brother… don’t do this to me Tommy… we were gonna get out of here. Come on. Come on – no, god, please – no… not again.”_

It was the _not again_ that chilled the air around her. When Ellie thought about all she’d lost and compared to Joel, there was nothing to say. She’d been brought up in this wild, but Joel had been forced to learn it. She didn’t know which was worse, all she knew was that he’d lost everything the night Sarah died, and maybe Tommy had been his last hook, a last anchor to Before. Ellie didn’t have a Before, of sorts; only Before Joel and After Joel – Marlene had been her anchor.

And a treacherous one, at that.

“We should go,” Ellie said. “Think we could climb out that window?”

Joel looked up and nodded. “Yeah. I’d say so.”

“Come on then.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”


	31. JOEL XV

**JOEL**

The ground sloped upwards on the approach to Boston. They’d come from the south, where resistance was least. Coming in from the north wasn’t advisable – they’d barely survived the inner-city the first time. Empty little towns and villages had stood on Tommy and Joel’s initial approach, but now, over twenty years later, they’d all been demolished. He’d heard the rumours through Tess, of course, that they were breaking them up and using the pieces to build smaller encampments a few miles east of the Zone, but he’d never been able to verify them.

“What now?” Ellie asked.

“We wait for the sun to go down a little. It’s too dark to go now. They’ll see us.”

Ellie stood on her toes. The roads twisted around heaps of loose gravel and rock, stopping anyone from seeing directly ahead. Deep gauges made tunnels that they’d used to leave the zone before, but Ellie said she didn’t want to take the chance of going through them while it was still light out. _The sun will die soon_.

Joel and Ellie would wait.

“Think this was a good idea? Coming back to Boston?”

Joel shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. We’ll get some food for a while, at least. I still know some people in here who might be willin’ to help us out. I’d bet they’ve relaxed their security some.”

“Relaxed it? Why would they do that?”

Joel tried to choose his words carefully, but they spilled out reckless all the same. “The Fireflies don’t have much of a figurehead anymore, with Marlene dead.” He glanced down at Ellie and she looked away, off to the north where the bent, broken and tumbled skyscrapers of Boston were. “So they probably broke apart and left FEDRA to their own devices.”

Ellie seemed sceptical. “I doubt they gave up that easy. I knew a lot of them… they weren’t the type to be, uh, scared away.”

“Maybe you’re right. They might just have merged inwards, with the military inside. There are other old places around. Last I heard, California had a functioning zone. I don’t know if it was part of this military or if it was a part of that bitch’s back in my home—”

“Lydia.”

“I remember her name… but it could be either, or neither.”

“Which do you think it is?”

“My money’s on neither. It’s hard to control something when you’re too far away from it. That’s the nature of the game. You want something, you gotta go in for it yourself, otherwise you’re in for nothin’ but failure. I learned that the hard way.”

Night came soon enough, and Ellie and Joel began to make their way in. They cut through growths that had spurted up through the old gravel. Fall just passed, but no doubt there’d been some greenery around here during the summer. If they’d been smart, they would have planted food inside and around, trying to make sure they had supplies for winter. It was almost upon them now; Joel could feel a chill like death in his bones, and each day he grew stiffer with it. He kept going, no matter how stiff he felt. Inside was where they’d be safe for a while, if they were.

Joel and Ellie were rarely so lucky.

They moved through large, empty stone pipes and down deep gauges in the land where they’d dug up trees for firewood. It was like that all around here – that and to repel hunters from trying to attack the place. For the most part it had always been successful. If Joel had ever been asked during his time as a hunter to scout out this area to try and make some form of battle plan, he’d have told him their chances weren’t great and find another scout.

Once, a long time ago, not long after Tommy had left, a hunter gang had attacked the zone. They’d held out there, trying to starve out the people inside. For weeks they waited, clearly with a small supply cache of their own – one that they rationed well. The decision was passed down eventually that they couldn’t be there any longer, but the leader in charge of the zone was unwilling to risk losing so many of his men in case more came.

It had come down to five people: Tess, Joel, Old Sam, Nathan and David. They snuck out of the zone in the same way Tommy and Tess had entered (and, in fact, the same way he meant to smuggle Ellie and himself in on this night). No guns allowed had been the rule. They crept across the undergrowth, knowing the land well, and used it to their advantage.

Maybe forty hunters in total had been there. At night they were alert, drinking and shouting, so the five waited. They waited until the morning light hurt their eyes and made them dizzy because they’d been drinking so much. They moved like ghosts into each of their tents and slit their throat, their cold steel biting away their lives one at a time. It had come to a firefight near the end; only Tess, Joel and Old Sam made it out unscathed.

David fought, hard as he could. Nathan had been a different story, running when it looked like the chips were down. A gunshot to the head not long after that, and David had died trying to save him. _Served them right_ , Joel thought, remembering. _Damn fools._ Some military had come once they were all dead and helped them move the bodies. It hadn’t been three days later than Joel and Tess had gone out to find the ammo and guns they’d hidden and discovered that the bodies were all gone.

But sure enough, three days later, meat had been on the menu for the quarantine zone. Nobody asked where it came from; nobody wanted to know. They just ate what they were given. Joel ate too. Tess wouldn’t touch it.

“Where are we going?” Ellie asked.

Joel pointed up a slope. “That way.” He took lead, moving ahead of Ellie. Oftentimes he found that she was leading more than him these days, but he attributed it to his age. Long gone were the days where Joel could lead the charge; his muscles ached after walking for ten minutes, though he ignored it, and cramped up something terrible anytime over an hour. He wished he could be stronger, for her, but he couldn’t. Some days she looked of him as though he was pathetic, and maybe in some ways he was.

Every morning he went to sleep thinking she’d been gone when he opened his eyes, but she never was.

“Do you remember being my age?”

“I do, yeah. Bits and pieces.”

“What was it like?”

“Huh?”

“Not having to worry about any of this. What was it like?”

“It was… different. You don’t really think about what things were when they were happening. You only value them once they’re gone. When they’re here... you don’t value them, they just _are_. I don’t remember much about being your age. I remember going out to the cinema, drinking with friends, not studyin’. Not worryin’ about anythin’ was… better. You could just go down to the fridge and get something to eat.”

“Sounds… nice.”

Joel and Ellie followed a path upwards and went far past the decaying bookshelves. The massive wall that bordered the quarantine zone made Joel think of the structure that surrounded Lydia’s fortress. _I wonder how bad this place could become under the worst of situations._

Lydia had been a different brand of evil entirely, Joel reckoned. She’d been obsessed with power in a way that not many were – someone willing to do more than lie; someone willing to kill her friends and family. Backstab, betray, everything she had to. _But then, that’s the world we live in now._ That was most people Joel met, with only a few exceptions. For every Tess or Tommy or Henry or Sam, there were five people Joel and Ellie had to kill before they could keep going. Marlene had stood in their way with as much force as she could muster up around them.

He remembered the hospital.

Shadows with guns streamed down dark corridors in lined, and one by one they fell. Nothing is more terrifying than someone with a single purpose, and Joel had one. He snapped their necks. He shot them, he set them on fire, he killed them because he had to and he didn’t look back.

They followed the wall along until an out of place bookshelf, where they stopped. Wooden panels were slotted firmly into place at the back, and metal ringed it to stop them falling away with decay. “Here. Give me a hand with it.”

Ellie helped Joel move the case to the left, revealing a deep gauge around a metal panel in the wall.

“How did they make this?”

“This entrance? It’s always been there.”

“And the guards don’t know about it?”

Joel felt around the edge for the little latch that let him pull it away. “No, they know. But it’s in their interest to leave it there. A way out if something bad goes down; they control the flow of people, more or less.”

“In which way _less_?”

“Well,” Joel shrugged, “when we left, Marlene would’ve paid the watcher. He wouldn’t’ve come cheap, seein’ as she was wanted for being a terrorist, but he’d have come.”

The latch was giving Joel some trouble, so he twisted at the short stub of metal until it gave way slightly, and the metal panel became to come away, and then it snapped off. “Damn it.”

“Can we still get in?”

“Yeah, we can still get in. It just means the bookshelf won’t go over it completely. The damn latch is attached to this little rope.” He looked around on the floor for it and found that it had splintered off. “Only way to completely bring it over after we’re inside. Damn. Doesn’t matter. Come on.”

Ellie went in first, kneeling down to get through, and Joel followed. They closed the door as best as they could. Ellie put her light on; Joel had lost his sometime before and never found another. The ceiling above them was very low, so they had to move crouched to get out at the other side. Tangled weeds had been tramped into the ground, making a rough path that led them out into a wide expanse of mangled trees and dark green.

The air smelled of damp and moss, as always. A thousand times the scent had filled his nostrils, but there was an element closer than familiarity to Joel; he had always been attached to Boston – not just the place, but the idea of it. Not safety, but a type of safety – free from perpetual worry that never faded.

Another part of Joel remembered waking up hot and sweaty with the bright sun streaming into the apartment he slept in. Groggy mornings and groggy days. Nothing ever changed.

“Do you remember the way?” Joel asked, noticing Ellie edging ahead of him a little.

“Yeah, I remember. Tess muttered the directions when we were coming out here the first time… I can hear her voice.” She laughed lightly.

Joel sighed, low enough that Ellie couldn’t hear. _I don’t remember her voice, or Tommy’s._

He thought hard as they skulked down a rooftop and lowered themselves down one at a time. Joel was trying to remember Sarah’s voice, but he was struggling. He could remember things she said easy enough; phrases spoken on that last night, things she said a thousand times before, the way she bounced when she spoke. But, for the life of him, her voice had faded and disappeared.

_I won’t forget her face._

When he thought of her last words, he heard Ellie’s voice. Sometimes he had nightmares of Sarah dying in his arms, dark memories of that night, but in place of her voice begging to be saved, it was Ellie’s.

“Here we are, right?”

“Yeah. Here we are.”

They were inside the zone now, coming out of the tunnel that led through. On the way past he’d glanced to check if there were any supplies on the table top. A part of him had lurched at seeing it, though he knew how stupid it was in truth. He was yearning for a past that was gone; a kind of nostalgia that pulsed with the ache of an old wound.

They came to a section of a wall that had been dug by shovel and hand. The wound had rotted away through the years, though it was not fully visible in the dark. The hole on the other side was, as always, closed up by another bookcase. It occurred to Joel that he hadn’t seen a book in a long time, and read one in even longer. _I was never a reader._

“Hold up,” Joel said and moved ahead of Ellie. He moved real close to the bookcase blocking their way and, lightly, knocked twice. There was a long silence, long enough for Joel to look back uncertain at Ellie, but then it slid away. The sudden spillage of firelight from inside blinded him, but when his eyes focused, the barrel of a gun was aimed at his face.

Joel froze. Any sudden movements and death would come, swift and sure as sunrise.

“Woah there,” he said lowly. “Don’t make any snap judgements here now.”

“Who the hell—Joel?”

“Yeah. It’s me.”

“Joel. Holy shit, Joel.”

The barrel fell away and Chuck was there; a thick man with a suitably thick beard. His clothes looked as filthy as ever, but he looked healthy enough. Bigger than he had been when Joel last saw him.

“Get in here, c’mon.”

Joel moved into the room and found it to be warm; a feeling he hadn’t experience for a long time. Ellie followed in behind him, but kept to his side once they were both in. They kept their distance from Chuck, though he’d let the gun down. Joel had a feeling that Ellie was ready to produce a revolver and shoot him in the head.

“What the hell happened to you?” Chuck looked at him, eyes wide as though he was seeing a ghost and then, with little warning, he reached for Joel’s hand and shook it hard. “And – _Tess_. Where’s Tess?”

Joel’s mouth opened slightly but no sounds came out. Ellie said, “She’s dead. Bite.”

Chuck backed off and lowered his eyes. “I’m sorry to hear that. I recognise you, little lady. You were here before. What’s it been – a year? A year and a half?”

“Something like that,” she said.

“You look like shit, Joel. C’mon, we’ll get you something to eat.”

 _Something to eat?_ People in Boston never had enough to save for the next day, never mind with a relative stranger you ain’t seen for a five hundred days.

“No, Chuck, you don’t gotta do that. Don’t waste food on us. I got some ration cards hidden here somewhere. I can find ‘em, use them.”

“Ration cards – yeah. You’ve got a lot to catch up on. Sit down. You’re in for a story.”

 


End file.
